As the competition between streaming services grows, it looks like inflation is now cutting into the overall fight. Now it appears that millions of subscribers could be leaving Netflix due to the increasing costs of the streaming service.
This was revealed in a survey taken at Reviews.org. They managed to include 1,000 Americans in the survey, looking “to gauge their streaming habits in 2022.” And, surprisingly, they discovered “that 1 in 4 are planning to leave Netflix this year.” This means that 25% of Netflix subscribers could be getting rid of the platform sometime this year.
As for why they might be leaving, two-thirds of respondents gave the same reason. It appears that they blame Netflix’s decision to increase the cost of their service. The costs of plans for Netflix have been raised by 20% for the Standard plan and 25% for the Premium plan. Even the Basic plan went up 11% in January 2022, which as they noted was the first time in three years. This also makes Netflix the most expensive average plan cost compared to the other most popular streaming services. So, with all of that in mind, it isn’t exactly surprising that so many subscribers want to leave the platform.
Of course, they did mention that Netflix has their “plans to launch a lower-cost, ad-supported tier” for their service. This could change the statistics quite a bit and even increase their number of subscribers and the platform’s revenue. After all, we’ve seen how successful this model has worked for Hulu in that regard. Then again, Netflix has also become the most popular streaming service over the years, and that was without the recent changes. So, with so many other options out there, perhaps we could see major losses for Netflix in the future.
Then again, they noted that Netflix still has a major share of the American marketplace. It appears that a whopping 70% of respondents used Netflix the most. This is followed by HBO Max – although that service is only used by 10% of respondents. Then, sharply behind that, is Disney Plus at 6%. The other streaming services have all reached less than 5%. So Netflix is still way ahead of the game for the time being. As things change, however, it’ll be interesting to see what happens to these numbers.