Netflix might be struggling to maintain subscribers right now, but the service would seem to be struggling slightly less than anticipated.
Following the company releasing its second-quarter results, Netflix founder Reed Hastings shared insights with Deadline about the drop in subscribers, noting that Stranger Things is to thank for the blow being softened.
Netflix lost around one-million subscribers this quarter, but the streamer was expecting that number to almost be twice as high. During this quarter it wasn’t just Stranger Things’ massive 1.3 billion hours watched that helped keep things from getting worse, but also the final season of Ozark and as the founder says, “lots of titles, lots of viewing”.
In this quarter, Stranger Things released its penultimate season which quickly exploded to the top of the streamers’ rankings and has maintained this spot for most of the time since. As noted, Ozark was another winner for the streaming service that saw similar success at the time of launch.
When Netflix’s Q1 reports launched, it was the first time that Netflix had reported a subscriber loss, noting that 200,000 global subscribers had moved away from the service. At this time, the company projected that Q2 would see a massive two million subscribers jump off the ship.
The total number of subscribers that dropped their Netflix subscriptions this latest quarter was 970,000, a number which is the lowest in the history of the company. While the total subscriber number fell, the quarter would still seem a success as the streaming service still saw revenue increase by nine percent increase year-over-year.
Netflix is projecting that the subscriber count will grow by one-million in the next quarter.
