Netflix has lost more than a million users in Spain since it introduced payment account sharing at the beginning of February, a measure that is not very popular among subscribers but on which the company has pinned hopes to increase its income and the user base.
At the beginning of February, Netflix announced the end of shared accounts in Spain, a practice that allowed friends and family to use the same account to share expenses, preferably activating the subscription that offers the most advantages, distributing its cost among the participants. In exchange, it introduced a new modality: payment sharing. In other words, a user can add several additional profiles to his subscription, of people who do not live at home, paying a certain amount for them.
The company has always been aware that this move would be unpopular with users and would lead to low subscriptions. But it maintains this option, along with the Basic subscription with ads, as two of the pillars on which to support its growth, both in revenue and in users.
According to estimates by the analysis firm Kantar, in Spain the streaming service has lost more than a million users since the end of the shared account became effective, as reflected in the study Entertainment on Demand, corresponding to the first quarter of 2023.
The forecasts for the second quarter follow the same line, while 10 % of those who have stayed on the platform plan to unsubscribe, as indicated by Kantar on its official blog. “The loss of some users was to be expected, but losing more than 1 million subscribers in just over a month has major consequences for Netflix and will influence its decision to continue with its measure worldwide,” they comment from Kantar.
In fact, the company has already delayed the expansion of said plan to more countries, which it will resume in the second quarter, betting on an improvement in the user experience.
The Kantar study also highlights the arrival of SkyShowtime in Spain, which represents 32.6 % of new subscriptions to streaming services on demand in the first quarter of the year. However, it is Amazon Prime that registers the highest number of new subscribers, with a share of 34 %.
Source: dpa
(Reference image source: Souvik Banerjee, Unsplash)
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