Netflix is distinctly more popular with younger consumers in the United States than with older generations. According to the findings of a recent survey, around 75 percent of respondents aged 18 to 34 subscribed to Netflix as of mid-2021, compared to just 44 percent of those aged 65 or above.

Netflix predicts further subscriber loss

Netflix is the most popular subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service worldwide. Millions of viewers from various demographics access the platform each day, but despite its availability in over 190 countries and its ever-expanding content catalog, Netflix reported a subscriber loss of around 200 thousand in the first quarter of 2022. It was the first time in over a decade that the streamer experienced a drop in user numbers, but according to the company, this downward trend might very well continue in the second quarter of the year. According to company reports, Netflix expects to lose an additional two million subscribers by mid-2022.

Cracking down on password sharing

Credential sharing has become an essential part of the video-on-demand (VOD) experience. Companies can stand out in today’s crowded streaming space by offering viewers to create multiple profiles and split subscription costs with other people in their household – which might be particularly appealing to younger audiences. Netflix is one of the first services to have provided multiple subscription options at various price tiers, but even so, the company has also acknowledged that millions of people share their login data without paying for additional accounts. In 2021, Netflix was estimated to have lost over 1.07 billion U.S. dollars in revenue due to password sharing. In 2022, the company reacted by announcing to charge additional sub-account fees for people streaming content outside the primary account holder’s household.

Netflix's global subscriber base has reached an impressive milestone, surpassing 300 million paid subscribers worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2024. This marks a significant increase of nearly 20 million subscribers compared to the previous quarter, solidifying Netflix's position as a dominant force in the streaming industry. Adapting to customer losses Netflix's growth has not always been consistent. During the first half of 2022, the streaming giant lost over one million customers. In response to these losses, Netflix introduced an ad-supported tier in November of that same year. This strategic move has paid off, with the lower-cost plan attracting 70 million monthly active users globally by November 2024, demonstrating Netflix's ability to adapt to changing market conditions and consumer preferences. Global expansion Netflix continues to focus on international markets, with a forecast suggesting that the Asia Pacific region is expected to see the most substantial growth in the upcoming years, potentially reaching around 70.1 million subscribers by 2029. To correspond to the needs of the non-American target group, the company has heavily invested in international content in recent years, with Korean, Spanish, and Japanese being the most watched non-English content languages on the platform.

Introduction

Netflix Statistics: In 2024, Netflix consolidated its status as a streaming leader among competitors worldwide with enormous milestones in new subscriptions, revenue, and content extension.

This article takes a more in-depth look at Netflix statistics, including major numbers, achievements in finance, demographic distributions of subscribers, investments in content, and other strategies that enabled Netflix to continue enjoying success.

This statistic illustrates the share of people who used Netflix in the past 12 months in the United States in 2023. The results were sorted by age. As of March 2023, 72 percent of respondents aged 18 to 29 years stated they used Netflix in the past 12 months.

A survey, conducted in November 2022 in the United States, found that the frequency of Netflix use varied depending on ethnicity. For instance, the majority of white respondents (37 percent) stated to have not watched Netflix at all in the month prior to the survey, while the share of daily watchers stood at 23 percent. This share is highest among black respondents, at 42 percent, while one in three Hispanic respondents use the streaming service on a daily basis.

According to a survey conducted in March 2023, 28 percent of respondents in the United States watched Netflix on a daily basis, while the share of daily Netflix users was similar with men as well as with women. Almost one in three people interviewed have not watched the streaming service at all in the month prior to the survey period.

Netflix reported approximately 90 million subscribers across the U.S. and Canada in the fourth quarter of 2024, making North America its second-largest global market after Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). Netflix reports its first subscriber loss in decades After a decline in the number of paid Netflix subscribers worldwide during the first two quarters of 2022, the streaming giant seems to be back on track, adding over 30 million net subscribers in only one year. The United States and Canada experienced the most substantial combined subscriber loss, which is particularly noteworthy considering that Netflix generates the highest average monthly revenue per user (ARPU) in these countries. When asked about the main reasons for canceling their subscription, many former Netflix users listed the price as their main incentive for leaving. The service’s average monthly fee has increased significantly over the past few years, leading audiences to switch to more affordable (ad-supported) video streaming options or cut down on subscriptions altogether. Expanding global influence and content catalogs Netflix remains the leading subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service worldwide, outperforming all other international streaming powerhouses and local providers by a significant margin. To maintain its global lead, Netflix allocates impressive sums toward marketing while also expanding its regional content. In 2021, for example, the Seattle-based company opened its first office in Stockholm to serve as a hub for the Nordics region. In addition to that, Netflix also produces more original content outside the U.S. to appeal to its diverse international user base.

Overview

Streaming Services Statistics: Streaming services have transformed the entertainment landscape, revolutionizing how people consume content.

The advent of high-speed internet and the proliferation of smart devices have fueled the growth of these platforms, offering a wide array of movies, TV shows, music, and more, at the viewers' convenience.

This introduction provides an overview of key statistics that shed light on the impact, trends, and challenges within the streaming industry.

The number of Netflix viewers in the United States was reportedly expected to reach 174.7 million as of 2021, and is forecast to increase annually. By the year 2025, it is projected that there will be over 188 million people in the U.S. watching content on the video on demand platform.

Daily netflix use is most common among younger age groups in the United States, a survey found, conducted in November 2022. Americans aged 65 years or only are least likely to use Netflix on a daily basis, as only 10 percent in this age group stated to do so. By contrast, 37 percent of Americans between 18 and 35 years watch Netflix at least once a day and around one in three Americans aged 35 to 44 years do so.

Netflix's video on-demand streaming service has been attracting mostly adults aged between 25 and 34 years old, with respective shares of 35 and 42 percent during the first quarter of 2017 and the first quarter of 2018. This was followed by the 35 to 44 and the 18 to 24 years old age groups.

Time spent on Netflix in the United Kingdom (UK)

In a survey conducted in 2018, over half of the respondents aged between 15 and 34 years old stated watching Netflix weekly. That same year, British consumers were estimated to have spent 134 minutes per day on average watching Netflix.

  Increase in Netflix usage

The number of households in the UK subscribing to Netflix has been rising steadily from 2014 to 2019, reaching 12.4 million subscribers as of the fourth quarter of 2019. Netflix revenues experienced a subsequent increase during this period and were estimated to grow further to over one billion U.S. dollars by 2020.

According to the most recently available data, 77 percent of surveyed video on demand users in the United States subscribed to Netflix. The streaming service giant’s success in the United States is hardly a secret – Netflix is the leading video subscription service in the U.S., with its subscriber numbers eclipsing all other streaming companies including Hulu and Amazon.

Video on Demand

Video on demand (often abbreviated simply to VoD) lets users watch the content they want, whenever they want, and thus has a major advantage over traditional over the air programming. With consumers leading increasingly hectic lifestyles and growing more reliant on digital media and devices which allow them to watch, read and listen to content on the go, VoD offers an effective solution.

The ability to catch up on TV shows after they have aired provides viewers with a way to enjoy their favorite content without scheduling their lives around it. Shows can now be enjoyed on a morning or evening commute, during work breaks and via Wi-Fi in public places across the globe, regardless of whether they aired the previous day or the previous year. Some U.S. adults even admitted to subscribing to a streaming service exclusively to watch a specific show – 61 percent of 18 to 29-year-olds said that they had done this as of early 2019, as well as 27 percent of adults aged 65 or older.

Video on demand platforms also accommodate the vast array of different user preferences, and for U.S. adults there are many reasons to sign up to subscription a VoD service. Original content was cited as a main reason for signing up to such a service, however others enjoyed the back-catalogue of movies available whilst some simply liked being able to access content from countries outside the United States.

The days where viewers would sit down at the same time every evening after work to watch their most loved shows are gradually disappearing, and with Netflix churning out more original content every month, in years to come those times may have gone completely.

In 2024, Netflix revealed that it had 89.63 million paying streaming subscribers in the United States and Canada. North America had long been Netflix's biggest market, though subscriber numbers in the EMEA region surpassed that in the U.S. and Canada for the first time during 2022. The number of paid streaming memberships in Asia Pacific grew the most, by 13 percent compared with the previous year.

During the second half of 2024, the daily time spent streaming Netflix around the world amounted to one hour and 46 minutes. While the streaming giant's subscriber number increased in the past year, viewing time dropped by 10 minutes compared to the first half of 2024.

Netflix continues to dominate the UK streaming landscape, with 17.1 million households subscribing to the service in the fourth quarter of 2024. This marks a significant increase from 16.7 million subscribers in the same period of the previous year, demonstrating the platform's enduring popularity despite fierce competition in the video-on-demand landscape. Netflix's competitors While Netflix remains the leading subscription video-on-demand service in the UK in terms of customer numbers, Amazon Prime Video boasts the largest content library among major SVOD platforms, with over 42.6 thousand hours of content available as of May 2024. However, when it comes to market share based on user interest, Netflix still holds the top spot, edging out providers such as Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and Apple TV+. Demographic preferences Interestingly, streaming preferences vary across age groups. Among viewers aged 65 and above, Amazon Prime Video is the preferred choice in the UK for 36 percent, while Netflix captures one-third of this demographic. This contrasts with the overall market dominance of Netflix, suggesting that older audiences may have different content preferences. The generational divide in streaming habits is further illustrated by data from Flanders in Belgium, where millennials show a slightly higher Netflix usage rate compared to Gen Z, both significantly outpacing older age groups.

In 2020, there were around 18 million Canadians using Netflix via app or website at least once per month, up from 16.2 million users the previous year. Between 2018 and 2019 the number of Netflix users in Canada increased by nearly three million, with 16.2 million Canadians using Netflix in 2019. The numbers are expected to steadily grow and it has been estimated that by 2025 there will be over 19 million Netflix users in Canada.

Netflix was introduced to Canadian audiences in 2010. By the end of 2011, the online video platform had 1.14 million paying subscribers, and four years later the number was to be roughly four times bigger. With such paying subscriber growth, Netflix revenue was also estimated to increase from 115 million Canadian dollars in 2011 to approximately 447 million in 2015. Geographically, Alberta was the province with the highest penetration of Netflix subscriptions - more than half of the population in the region were subscribing to the video service in 2015. On a national scale, the online video platform was believed to reach 47 percent of the Anglophone Canadian population and 19 percent of the Francophones in the country in early 2015.

In the third quarter of 2024, nearly one in four Netflix users in Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) chose the platform's ad-supported streaming tier, making this region the provider's largest market. In contrast, 15 percent of Netflix users in Latin America opted for the ad-supported option in the same period.

By 2026, around 86 million Europeans are forecast to have a Netflix subscription. In 2020 this figure stood at just below 60 million Netflix subscribers in Europe. As of the first quarter of 2021, Netflix had almost 210 million paying subscribers worldwide.

History of Netflix Netflix was founded in the United States in 1997, offering media through online streams or through a DVD-by-mail service. Now, the service is available across more than 190 countries globally and boasts revenues of almost 25 billion U.S. dollars. As of the first quarter of 2020, its leading markets included the U.S., Brazil, and the UK, although it is popular across many European countries.

Video-on-Demand Despite some European countries having access to as many as around 600 legal options for Video-on-Demand services, in terms of use there are two clear front runners. As of 2020, Netflix held a market share of almost 40 percent of the Subscription Video-on-Demand services in the EU, while Amazon came second with about a third of the market.

Netflix's lower-cost ad-supported plan reached 70 million monthly active users globally in November 2024, marking an increase of 57 million monthly active users compared to the beginning of the year. Netflix introduced an ad-supported tier in November 2022 in response to subscriber losses during the first half of 2022.

This statistic shows the age profile of Netflix users in the United Kingdom (UK) in early 2015 and 2016. During the period of consideration, the popularity of Netflix grew across all age groups, but, overall, it was more popular among younger groups. As of the most recent survey wave, 58 percent of respondents aged between 16-24 years reported using Netflix (14 percent increase compared to early 2015).