With streaming giant Netflix losing subscribers (200,000 globally, to be exact) for the first time in a decade, we were curious how many of those subscribers were Australian.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t get our hands on this info. So we pivoted, asking instead how many Aussie subscribers does each platform have?
Netflix doesn’t give this intel out (we asked). But it’s the same for the other major streaming platforms Australians use – we find this out when they drop their financial results on us, or when surveys are run on household usage.
Thankfully, organisations like Telsyte exist. So let’s see what they have to say on the number of Australian streaming subscribers for each major service.
Firstly, their data is almost a year old. It’s been curated as of June 2021 (it was published in September, however). Notable things that have happened since June 2021 include lockdowns in both Sydney and Melbourne, as well as a bunch of rain-soaked days that could have seen people flock to streaming services to ease the boredom a little. Another thing was the addition of Paramount+ in August.
It’s best to not take this as gospel, but it should provide a bit of an indication as to how many subscribers are on each streaming platform.
Australians were responsible for 42 million streaming platform subscriptions at the end of June 2021, which is up from 37 million in June 2020. 78 per cent of Aussie households had at least one subscription and on average, each household has 4.3 platform subscriptions.
As of June, 6 million Australians were subscribed to Netflix. It is without a doubt the dominant service. Coming in second, according to Telsyte, was Amazon Prime Video, with 2.9 million subscribers. Disney+ had 2.6 million (this is before it was announced Marvel content will be shipped over to Disney’s streaming service, mind you) and Stan clocked 2.4 million.
What’s missing from this list is Foxtel, Binge and Kayo, as well as Paramount+, Apple TV+, Hayu, Shudder, Britbox and YouTube Premium. In financial results published in August, Foxtel reported 2.134 million streaming subscribers across its three platforms.
With Netflix potentially cracking down on password sharing (which no one would ever do, ever, never ever), or if you’re just curious, here’s how much it would cost you to sign up to everything.