2023-08-10 23:57:27
JOS M. RODRGUEZ SILVA
Updated Thursday, August 10, 2023 – 23:57
Streaming platforms seek to shorten steps towards profitability with Netflix’s strategy as a reference
Members of the writers’ union protest in front of the Disney headquarters on the 100th day of the writers’ strikeValerie MaconAFPE Disney+ companies launch a plan with ads in Europe and study limiting shared accounts
A price rise in USA y United Kingdom, the launch in Europe of a subscription with ads and the study of a way to limit the shared accounts that use its platform. This bouquet of announcements can take any reader back to the manual applied by Netflix a few months ago to give his business a spin. However, the announcements were not made by any executive of the Los Gatos platform, but by Bob IgerCEO of Disneywhich explained on Wednesday the new guidelines that the company will apply to straighten out its streaming business.
The objective of the company founded by Walt Disney for your ‘direct to consumer’ business (which also encompasses ESPN+ and the independent business of Disney+ in India) is to put losses behind in 2024 and start making profits. Time is pressing for the company, since Netflix it chains quarter after quarter in ‘black numbers’ and has also managed to increase its user base by almost six million accounts after the extension of its shared account limitation program. The wagon of benefits also seems to have been added HBO Max, the platform -which is in full remodeling to be called just Max-. it barely lost three million dollars between April and June, despite leaving 1.8 million consumers behind after the end of The Last of Us y Succesion.
On a positive path, the service of Disney halved its losses in the same period, but these still amount to 512 million dollars (465 million euros in exchange), although, within the framework of the fiscal year, the reduction is much more modest: with a reduction in the losses of 12.5%. As it happened with HBO Max, Neither has the firm been able to incorporate a significant cohort of new users and it barely added 800,000 clients in the last three months, with a drop of 300,000 in the United States, its main market, figures similar to those it added. Paramount+.
CHALLENGES FOR THE SECTOR
After the last 12 months of frenzy in the sector, with changes in the domes, strategies or even the names of the platforms, the second half of 2023 is not expected to be much calmer. In the first place, the landing of streaming platforms in the world of advertising comes at a time of macroeconomic uncertainty that makes it difficult to guess how advertiser spending will evolve in general.
In addition, for platforms to become an attractive destination for advertising promotion, they need to fatten their user base, and content is a key element there. For this reason, all the managers have underlined during their interventions the need to reach an agreement with the scriptwriters and with the actors as soon as possible to prevent the closures from being prolonged and affecting the catalogs and forecasts of studies and platforms more than what they already have. are doing. From Netflix, HBO or Disney it is maintained that the series and films scheduled for the second half of the year will not suffer major changes in their scheduled dates, but from next year the situation will not be the same.
On the other hand, the strikes and the stoppage in filming are translating into savings (temporary, mind you) for the platforms, which is increasing the cash flow of the companies and helping them to materialize their cost reduction objectives. In this sense, Warner Bros. has been the most transparent, pointing out that in the last quarter it saved around 100 million dollars due to the slowdown in the industry.
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