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Netflix increases sub prices

Posted: Thu May 30, 2019 6:48 pm
by Achtung Englander
Was £7.99 per month, going to £8.99 per month. Expect increase sometime in June. So that is £108 a year. Still worth it. Just.

Re: Netflix increases sub prices

Posted: Thu May 30, 2019 9:15 pm
by Mantis
Depends how much the other new services squeeze them for content. I'm not that bothered about a lot of their own shows, I liked it in the early years when it was essentially just one massive repository of every movie and TV show you could think of.

I'd have thought that with so many other businesses launching competitor networks that they'd be squeezed into lowering their prices a little to stay competitive.

Re: Netflix increases sub prices

Posted: Fri May 31, 2019 9:31 am
by Drarok
Raise the prices now, wait until people forget, and then lower them again later. Business 5D chess mode, activate!

Re: Netflix increases sub prices

Posted: Tue Jul 09, 2019 3:35 pm
by Achtung Englander
From Forbes. In a space of 1 year the US will have about half a dozen to 10 streaming services from Netflix, Amazon, HBO, CBS, NBC, Apple TV, Disney & Warner. Here the BBC and ITV will launch BritBox and pull out of Netflix as well.

Gaming is going the same way.

We are just going to have subscriptions coming out of our arse.

If there were a stock market “hall of fame,” Netflix (NFLX) would be a shoo-in.

Its stock has soared 8,500%+ in the last decade as “streaming” video has caught fire.

Netflix achieved those gains by stealing tens of millions of customers from cable companies. Last year, half of Americans age 22–45 didn’t watch a second of cable TV. And 35 million Americans have dropped cable in the last decade.

But it’s time to come to terms with a sad truth...

Netflix’s glory days are over. And what’s coming next won’t be pleasant if you own Netflix stock.

Until recently, Netflix was the only real streaming game in town. Not only did it enjoy virtually zero competition. Many of the biggest, most powerful media companies on earth helped Netflix build its business.

Netflix founder Reed Hastings did a lot of things right. But his most genius move was leasing shows and movies that other companies produced.

In the early 2010s, Netflix signed deals with movie and TV makers like Disney and NBC. For a small fee, Netflix bought the rights to air wildly popular content like the Marvel Avengers movies... and hit comedies like The Office and Friends.

In other words, Netflix built its business on the back of other companies’ content. And it worked incredibly well. Netflix now has 149 million subscribers—more than any cable company.

But this world is now gone.

One by one, Netflix’s colossal competitors have woken up. They’re ending their contracts with Netflix, taking back control of their content, and launching their own streaming services that will compete with Netflix.

This is happening right now. Have you heard about Disney’s new streaming service, Disney+? Launching later this year, it’ll be the new home of the world’s most popular movies.

Although Disney is best known for Mickey Mouse, it owns the greatest portfolio of movies ever assembled.

The 3 best-selling movies so far this year are Avengers: Endgame, Captain Marvel, and Aladdin.

Disney owns all 3.

The 3 best-selling movies of 2018 were Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and Incredibles 2.

Disney owns all 3.

The 3 best-selling movies of 2017 were Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and Beauty and the Beast.

Disney owns all 3.

Except for the newest ones, all these wildly popular movies are currently on Netflix. By the end of this year, they’ll be removed from Netflix for good. To watch them, you’ll have to get a Disney+ subscription.

Disney+ will cost $6.99/month—or around half the price of Netflix’s most popular subscription.

Netflix’s Best Content Is Being Gutted

Netflix investors should be equally worried about AT&T’s new streaming service that launches in 2020. It’ll cost slightly more than Netflix at $16–17 month.

AT&T is best known as a cell phone company. But its purchase of WarnerMedia in 2018 turned it into a media powerhouse. It owns HBO, the most successful premium TV network ever. HBO continues to pump out all-time hits like The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, and Sex in the City.

Remember, Netflix achieved its incredible success by being first in streaming. It's a true disruptor stock that revolutionized TV. For years it essentially “owned” the mechanism of airing TV and movies over the internet.

Now that others have caught up, the game has changed. Soon customers will have lots of streaming services to choose from. They’ll choose the ones with the best content.

And Netflix is losing its best content!

It’s not just Disney movies that Netflix is losing. Over the next two years its whole library will be gutted.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the most watched show on Netflix is The Office.

Netflix does not own The Office. NBC Universal owns The Office.

NBC Universal is launching its own streaming service and pulling The Office off Netflix for good by the end of next year.

Another extremely popular show on Netflix is Friends.

Friends is owned by WarnerMedia, which, as I mentioned, is now owned by AT&T.

Friends will be pulled off Netflix for good in 2020.

Losing The Office and Friends is bad, but it’s just scratching the surface. According to analytics firm Jumpshot, more than half of Netflix’s 50 most popular shows are owned by companies planning to launch their own streaming services.

Do you see what’s happening here?

Netflix is losing all the best movies and TV shows.

How could this not cripple it?

Netflix sees the writing on the wall, and is spending gobs of money to reinforce its own content library. It spent $12 billion last year, and it expects to spend another $15 billion this year.

It now invests more in content than any other American TV network. But it’s come at a steep cost. To fund its new shows, Netflix is borrowing huge sums of money. Over the past year its debt has shot up 58% to $10.3 billion. For perspective, Netflix earned $1.2 billion in profits last year.

Unfortunately, no matter how much it spends, it can’t hope to compete with Disney or AT&T. Netflix is in an impossibly tough spot.

Can Netflix survive?

Netflix’s market cap is about $165 billion—making it the 30th-biggest publicly traded US company.

It got there through domination of streaming which, as I’ve shown, is a thing of the past.

Going forward it will succeed or fail on the popularity of the TV shows and movies it produces.

Let’s assume it succeeds and creates a ton of content people love. The problem is, companies that produce TV shows and movies are not worth anywhere near $165 billion.

Even wildly successful film studios are worth tens of billions, max. In 2018 Walt Disney studios—which includes iconic brands like Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar—generated $10 billion in revenue, and $2.98 billion in profit.

Netflix has one big advantage. It has already amassed a giant audience of 149 million paying subscribers. It’s far easier to keep a customer than to get one.

Netflix will survive. But it will shrink. Even in the most generous scenario, within a couple of years I can’t see it being worth more than $100 billion.

That would put its stock price at about $225/share—or about 40% below its current price.

Again, that’s a rosy scenario. Don’t be surprised if Netflix stock gets cut in half, or worse, in the next year or two

Re: Netflix increases sub prices

Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2019 3:19 pm
by DjchunKfunK
That feels rather overblown, Netflix moved over to make their own content a few years back with their stated goal being around 80% original content. A lot of the stuff that people talk about on the service now is their own stuff. The move to more subs is very annoying and feels unsustainable but Netflix are by no means doomed.

Re: Netflix increases sub prices

Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2019 4:27 pm
by Achtung Englander
I think he was focusing on their stock price but I agree with you. I do not even think Disney + is much of a threat given that Disney keep up making fucking it up. As I am not into Marvel and lost interest in Star Wars the only thing that might interest me is Pixar but I would rather buy those movies anyway.

Luckily SKY buys HBO content so at least we do not need to subscribe to those guys.

Re: Netflix increases sub prices

Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2019 4:53 pm
by Mantis
I don't think that any of these services are likely to be worth the cash on a monthly basis when you consider what their content output will be of material that will actually be worth watching. It's like the old days of subscribing to particular TV packages has moved over to the internet. I wasn't interested in a fragmented service back then and I won't be in future either, I'll just go back to buying the odd Blu Ray and torrenting the occasional TV show. Or waiting until a show is fully released, paying for a month to binge the season, then cancelling.

Re: Netflix increases sub prices

Posted: Wed Jul 10, 2019 8:32 pm
by Strudel
Yeah, this all seems very over-blown to me and feels much more like a hatchet job at Netflix than any real analysis of the market. Yes, I fully expect a lot of older stuff to go from Netflix for the other streaming services (though it's worth noting that a lot of those are US-only, whereas Netflix already has a massive global footprint) but that doesn't mean everyone will make an exodus from Netflix.

The article quotes the best selling cinema films, but says nothing about the films or TV shows most watched on Netflix (which isn't too surprising given how coy Netflix are about releasing such data) and I'd definitely be very cautious about equating cinema-going with must-have TV.

Sky having HBO content in the UK hasn't stopped hordes of people jumping to Netflix. I'm not sure how they're defining HBO as "The most successful premium TV network ever" as well. I have no argument with the idea that HBO produce amazing content, but that's very different to being The Most Successful.

I also take serious issue with the statement that "Now that others have caught up, the game has changed. " Others haven't caught up at all - what they've done is join the game

"Netflix sees the writing on the wall, and is spending gobs of money to reinforce its own content library" - It's not like they're suddenly panicking and throwing money at it. They've been ramping up their production spend for a decade.

This just feels like a terrible scare piece.