It might be a bold new world of streaming media out there in our merry old land of Aus, but make no mistake about it – it is very much Netflix‘s world that we’re all playing in.
The online streaming platform has made huge inroads into the Australian market since its “official” launch in the country just a couple of short months ago. And despite the huge efforts by locally-based rivals, it’s the red giant that’s blown them all out of the water.
mUmBRELLA reports that, following research conducted by Roy Morgan, Netflix has ticked over 1 million subscribers in Australia – outstripping its nearest opponent by a whopping 10:1.
The research – conducted from a sample size of 2,088 Australians aged 14 and over – found that Netflix now has as many as 1.039million local subscribers, and its nearest rival hasn’t even cracked six figures. In fact, it’s Presto – the joint venture between Seven and Foxtel – who is in a distant second place with just 97,000 subscribers, followed closely by the Nine and Fairfax-backed Stan which has 91,000.
The struggling Quickflix and the “didn’t actually know it existed” Foxtel Play lag even further behind that, with 43,000 and 40,000 people on board respectively.
The magically million mark for Netflix comes from numbers taken in May, and shows a rise on the initial number of 766,000 from April – the first full month of Netflix availability within Australia.
The research also found that the million viewers live in 408,000 households – and, even more interestingly, as many as half of Stan, Presto, and Quickflix’s combined subscribers also have a Netflix subscription.
But whilst the numbers for Netflix are large and are growing at a remarkably rapid rate, mUmBRELLA was quick to point out that the research also found that some 5 million households in Australia are still reliant on a Foxtel pay-TV subscription.
Quickflix CEO Stephen Langsford took a veiled swipe at the numbers, stating “We don’t know how you can get anything sensible quoting millions of subscribers from a survey of only 2,000 respondents,” ignoring the concept of statistical data gathering and sample sizes. He added, “Those respondents look like they include 14-years-old but you need a valid credit card (and therefore be 18-years-old) to subscribe,” again, ignoring the presence of Visa Debit cards, as well as the existence of Mum and Dad.
Whatever the case, it’s abundantly clear that the market is now Netflix‘s sandbox – and all competitors are just playing in it.
Photo: AFP via Getty Images.
via mUmBRELLA.
