Pumpkin spice latte Squid Game szn is almost upon us.
Netflix is debuting a Squid Game live experience in New York on October 11, ahead of the show’s December 26 debut of its second season, with plans to later offer similar experiences in Asia and Europe.
Live events are just one area that streamers have been investing in: Let’s not forget the mad dash by streamers to snap up rights to air various sports games that’s been happening for months now. At the same time, several companies with cable businesses are desperately looking to shore up their streaming arms after taking major losses in their linear TV arms.
While some streamers have been on the market longer than others, they’re all grappling with a viewing landscape and consumer preferences that are rapidly shifting. Now that the latest earnings season is pretty much over, here’s the skinny on how each streamer fared.
The Paramount-ain is crumbling: It’s been a really tough month for Paramount. After announcing its merger with Skydance in July, the company disclosed a roughly $6 billion write-down on its cable business during its Q2 earnings. Paramount+ plans will see price hikes—the Essential plan with ads will increase from $5.99/month to $7.99/month for new customers
That’s not to say Paramount+ didn’t clock some wins: Its global ARPU spiked 26% year over year, and its revenue grew 46% YoY. However, it dropped 2.8 million subscribers over the quarter to 68 million.
Cracks at Max: Tough times are also afoot at Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max. Its parent company disclosed a $9.1 billion write-down of its linear business, similar to Paramount, sending stocks plummeting in the days following. Rumors that WBD could sell off some of its properties were quickly put to rest by WBD CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels on the company’s earnings call.
“There have been rumors about potentially splitting up the company,” he told investors and analysts. “Look, we have been operating under the One Warner Bros. Discovery strategy for the past two and a half-years since creating Warner Bros. Discovery. And every day I’m seeing evidence everywhere in the business of the benefits of those strategies.”
As for WBD’s other results, its DTC unit, which houses Max, saw a 6% drop in revenue from the prior year quarter. However, it notched another 3.6 million subscribers in Q2. Its DTC unit has 103.3 million subscribers internationally; global ARPU jumped to $8.00 from $7.77 in Q2 2023. The Paris Olympics may have helped boost its growth: WBD reached 215 million viewers in Europe, up 23% from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
But not all is well for WBD in the sports realm: In late July, it filed a lawsuit against the NBA, claiming the league didn’t accept its matching offer for media rights on its TNT Sports network. The lawsuit comes amid WBD’s upcoming fall debut of the $42.99/month sports streaming platform Venu Sports, its joint venture with ESPN and Fox whose debut has been temporarily blocked amid a legal challenge from Fubo, which has argued that the streamer is anti-competitive.
WBD has also been aggressively pursuing an expansion into gaming, acquiring gaming studio Player First Games, with mixed results so far: It clocked a $200 million loss on its game Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, based on the eponymous Warner Bros. film.
On the content side, WBD’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which hit Max after its theatrical release, flopped. Its second season of the Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon has struggled to achieve ratings as high as its inaugural season. Perhaps some content slated to hit Max down the road, like Season 3 of The White Lotus, will bring in more eyeballs.
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Mouse House movie machine: Disney has been churning out hit movie after hit movie this year. Both Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine have clocked over $1 billion each at the box office. Besides becoming the highest-grossing animated film of all time, Inside Out 2 also drove 100 million additional views of its predecessor on Disney+.
Speaking of Disney+, its revenue could be boosted by recently announced price hikes on the streamer: its ad-free tier is rising from $13.99/month to $15.99/month, and the Disney+ basic ad-supported tier is getting a $2/month increase as well. Disney will also be leaning into a password crackdown in September.
Disney’s streaming business became profitable for the first time ever, making a $47 million profit in Q3 of 2024 after losing $512 million in the prior year period. Disney+ core subscribers also jumped from 117.6 million in Disney's Q2 to 118.3 million in Q3.
The Peacock spreads its feathers: NBCUniversal’s Peacock is steadily growing with some recent help from a certain Parisian athletic event. The 2024 Paris Olympics contributed to an 82% spike in viewership across NBCU's platforms from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
While parent company Comcast continues to bleed pay TV subscribers, the streamer finished Q2 with 33 million subscribers, a drop of 500,000 from last quarter. It shrunk its losses to $348 million from $639 million in Q1. Price hikes on Peacock plans announced before the Olympics have gone live, which could help.
On the content side, NBCUniversal has the highly anticipated Wicked movie coming out later this year, which would likely head to Peacock at some point. It also recently greenlit future seasons of its hit show The Traitors.
Netflix nails it: As usual, Netflix leads the pack with 278 million member households, up from about 270 million last quarter, with its ad-supported tier seeing 34% quarter-over-quarter bump in sign-ups (looks like that password crackdown is working). The spike comes as it moves to get rid of its basic plan in the US and France, and as it builds out its in-house ad tech platform and tests pause ads.
However, within its United States and Canada (UCAN) region, ARM dropped from $17.30 in Q1 to $17.17 in Q2, which may have been contributed to by the large number of users who have opted for Netflix’s ad-supported tier.
Moviegoers are a Prime target: You may have finished binging Prime Video’s recent hits like My Lady Jane (which it just canceled) or Season 4 of The Boys, and Amazon plans to significantly ramp up its theatrical release output in the future, acquiring UK outfit Bray Film Studios as it widens its cinematic horizons.
It’s not only movies that Prime Video’s leaning into, but sports too: Prime Video recently nabbed streaming rights to certain future NBA games, as well as future Monday night NHL games in Canada. We’d wager that will drive even more subscribers to Prime; recent figures put Prime Video’s ad reach at over 200 million monthly viewers.