by Thinus Ferreira
Netflix announced that it has surged to over 203 million subscribers in 2020 and on Wednesday night teased that it would announce a renewal of its popular new period drama Bridgerton for a second and maybe more seasons later this week, likely Friday.
In its 2020 fourth quarter results, the world's biggest video streaming service announced that it had added another 8.51 million paid subscribers worldwide, more than the 6 million it predicted, bringing its total to 203.7 million subscribers worldwide.
This means that Netflix added a whopping 36.6 million subscribers worldwide during the whole of 2020 - its biggest annual gain and surpassing its previous record of 28.6 million new subscriber additions in 2018.
Netflix said that 83% of the new subscribers added in 2020 were from outside the United States and Canada, and that the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region accounted for 41% of its full year's new subscribers in 2020.
After last week when Netflix announced its 2021 film slate with 71 new titles that it will release this year with a new movie every week, Netflix said in its Q4 results that it has more than 500 titles "preparing to launch" or in the post-production stage (including the 71 films).
Netflix is facing a growing surge of competition in the subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) sphere, both in the rollout of new streaming services that are expanding their availability footprint globally, but also in the massive investment that streamers like Disney's Disney+, Discovery Inc.'s Discovery+, Amazon Prime Video, ViacomCBS' Paramount+, Apple TV+, HBO Max, Peacock and others are making in creating new content and stocking their library carousels.
"Discovery recently launched its streaming service. Disney+ is expanding in new countries and with more content. ViacomCBS will be unveiling its plans for Paramount+ in 2021. Combined with the launch of Apple TV+, WarnerMedia’s HBO Max, and NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming services, this signifies that these companies all recognize the future is streaming entertainment, a vision we have been working towards since inception," says Netflix,
"Our strategy is simple: If we can continue to improve Netflix every day to better delight our members, we can be their first choice for streaming entertainment. This past year is a testament to this approach," Netflix said in its Q4 shareholder letter.
"The big growth in streaming entertainment has led legacy competitors like Disney, WarnerMedia and
Discovery to compete with us in new ways, which we’ve been expecting for many years. This is, in part, why we have been moving so quickly to grow and further strengthen our original content library across a wide range of genres and nations," Netflix said.
"Season four of the critically acclaimed The Crown was the biggest season so far and drove new watchers of prior seasons. In its first 28 days, more member households chose to watch season four of The Crown than each of the prior seasons, helping to grow the number of member households that have chosen to watch this series to over 100 million since its initial launch."
In its shareholder letter, Netflix teased an announcement regarding its new period drama Bridgerton from Shonda Rhimes' Shondaland that is currently the second most-watched show on Netflix South Africa.
"The title has proven immensely popular and we’ll have some exciting news about Bridgerton later this week," Netflix said about its 5th most-watched original series globally.
Looking ahead Netflix projects that it will add roughly 6 million new subscribers in the first quarter of 2021.
Contributing to this subscriber number would be things like the new partnership between South Africa's MultiChoice that added streaming service functionality for Netflix SA and Amazon Prime as apps to its new DStv Explora Ultra decoder in late-2020.
