What’s on Every Major Streaming Service’s Holiday Wishlist in 2022?

The 2022 holiday season is here! Hanukkah is in full swing, and with Christmas just around the corner, executives from major streaming services are putting together their letters to Santa, full of their hopes and dreams for 2023. While more subscribers, increased revenue, breakout series, and blockbuster movies are likely towards the top of every platform’s list, we dug just a little bit deeper to find an item that every major streaming service will be wishing for next year!

Netflix: Success with Anti-Password Sharing Measures

Netflix has had a more-than-bumpy ride in 2022. The service lost subscribers for the first two quarters of the year, and the launch of its new ad-supported plan hasn't yet been a rousing success. The first big endeavor the service will attempt in the new year appears to be cracking down on users sharing passwords.

That move is virtually guaranteed to be highly unpopular with Netflix users, who have been encouraged to share the service for years. However, as the streaming industry made a dramatic turn this past year, if Netflix wants to continue being the tech and entertainment unicorn that it has always envisioned itself to be, it must find a way to monetize the estimated 100 million people using its service, but not paying for it.

The world’s largest streamer has to execute this delicate move in a way that doesn’t alienate too many customers if it wants to call the anti-password sharing efforts a success.

Disney+: More Live Content

Disney+ first dipped its toe into live streaming this year, offering several concerts plus a live stream of 2022's Oscar nominations. The streamer also became the home of the latest season of “Dancing With the Stars,” making it the first live series in the service’s history.

These moves are likely just the beginning of live content on Disney+. Now that the service offers an ad-supported tier, customers will be more accustomed to viewing shows and movies on the service with ads, which will help Disney+ expand its live offerings even further.

Hulu: Clarity on Future

The Hulu story is well-traveled by now: two-thirds of the company is owned by Disney, after its acquisition of FOX in 2019. The rest of the streamer is owned by Comcast. A thorny contract between the two companies states that Disney can buy the rest of the streaming service from Comcast, beginning in 2024.

That contract has led to several verbal dust-ups between the two companies in 2022, most likely in order to give one side leverage over the other in negotiations. Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek had stated publicly that he would like to acquire the rest of Hulu before 2024 and merge it with the company’s flagship streamer Disney+ to remove the customer pain point of having to bounce back and forth between services to stream the content that they want to watch.

However, late last month, Chapek was shockingly removed from his post and replaced with his predecessor (now also his successor) Bob Iger. The architect behind the creation of Disney+, Iger always envisioned Disney+ as being the home for the company’s family-friend content, not a catch-all hub for everything in the company’s general entertainment archive. So his vision for what a fully Disney-owned Hulu looks like might be substantively different than what Chapek had previously laid out.

For the sake of everyone working at Hulu, and the customers currently subscribed to both, here’s hoping a little clarity on the situation emerges in 2023.

Prime Video: More Live Sports

The transition of the NFL’s “Thursday Night Football” to a streaming-only format on Prime Video has been a success by most measures this season. The games haven't quite reached the level of viewership they saw on linear broadcasts, but with no huge technical issues and a large young audience, Amazon must be pleased with its initial results.

The next step for Prime Video is to add more sports to its offerings. The service was considered a serious contender to land the NFL’s out-of-market game package NFL Sunday Ticket for most of the year, but ended up falling short, as YouTube TV secured the rights earlier this week in a bit of a Christmas miracle. Though the bride’s maid in this particular rights bidding, Amazon clearly has its sights set on adding more sports to its streaming repertoire.

The service has a 12-hour daily block of sports talk carved out to break down the action and throughout 2022 has inked regional deals to stream games for the New York Yankees and the WNBA's Seattle Storm.

With the NBA’s broadcast contract expiring following the 2024-25 season, and Warner Bros. Discovery executives hinting that they might not be interested in reupping their deal, Prime Video could be in position to make a play for the league’s rights if it enters the bidding early.

HBO Max: Fewer Catastrophes and a Smooth Merger with discovery+

Ever since Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav took charge of the newly merged company with a mandate to find billions of dollars in savings in April 2022, life at HBO Max has been rough. Beloved shows have been canceled, nearly-finished series and movies have been written off, and content has been slashed from the service.

All that the streamer can ask for in 2023 is that the carnage ends before it executes a long-planned merger with discovery+ in the spring. If things calm down at WBD and the combination of streamers goes off successfully, perhaps the company can still salvage its reputation. Both customers, employees, and artists have not only been disappointed by the company’s cuts, but they have been angered by the cavalier attitude with which Zaslav has handled them.

The continued financial difficulties that the company is trying to navigate its way through have clearly had an impact on its standing with consumers and creators, but if it can result in some sort of stability, Zaslav appears to be willing to make the sacrifice. The only other question is whether or not subscribers will be willing to stick around for that stability to come?

Paramount+: Getting the Rights to ‘Yellowstone’ Back

This is probably the most unrealistic wish on the list so far. Paramount Global licensed the streaming rights of past seasons to Peacock in January 2020 before CBS All Access morphed into Paramount+, and has been kicking itself ever since. The service is still home to “Yellowstone” spin-offs “1923” and “1883,” but the original show will live on Peacock for the foreseeable future.

If Paramount+ somehow managed to convince Peacock to sell the rights back, it would be a massive coup. The move would unite the so-called “Sheridan-verse” (named for “Yellowstone” co-creator Taylor Sheridan) on one streaming service, and would give Paramount+ ample justification for executing an teased price hike.

However, as the most popular show on cable, “Yellowstone” continues to break records on the Paramount Network and it is unlikely that NBCUniversal would let it leave Peacock anytime soon, especially as it is still searching for the first breakout hit of its own.

Peacock: Double Paid Subscriber Base Again

Speaking of Peacock, the service has been punching above its weight class all year long. The streamer recently announced that it had doubled its paid subscriber total this year, jumping from 9 million to 18 million in 2022 alone. Users of Comcast’s Xfinity internet and cable services can subscribe to the service free, making it even more impressive that Peacock nabbed so many new paying customers.

If the service managed to repeat that feat, it would claim 36 million paid subscribers. That’s still a far cry from the hundreds of millions that services like Disney+ and Netflix claim, but it would demonstrate that Peacock is on the right track while so many streamers struggle to find the path toward profitability in an increasingly crowded market. NBCU executives have long claimed that the streamer's unusual path is exactly what they had planned, and if they can continue to execute this type of growth, they might just be proven correct.

With live feeds of local NBC stations rolling out on the service, as well as regional sports networks in select markets, it’s not impossible (although it’s likely improbable) that Peacock doubles its paid subscribers again in 2023.