Ranking The Potential Of Each Streaming Service

Estimated Subscribers – 203m

Blockbuster once turned down the opportunity to buy Netflix for the small sum of $50 million, seeing no viability in its business model or threat to their long-established rental platform.

Fast forward two decades and Blockbuster has been wiped off he face of the earth with Netflix, the pioneer and undisputed market leader in terms of subscription numbers, valued by the market at a whopping $227 billion.

At no point should Netflix ever consider themselves ‘too big to fail’, as complacency and a reluctance to innovate and adapt to the market is the root cause of most large business collapses, but their brand name has become so embedded into contemporary culture that it can be used as a byword for streaming in general by itself – nobody ever proposes to ‘Amazon Prime and chill’ now do they?

A fair criticism of Netflix’s original content strategy is that it has emphasised quantity over quality. Over the last couple of years, they have purchased enough material to have multiple new releases per week, but how much of this is truly memorable? Aside from obvious standouts with staying power such as Stranger Things, Queer Eye and The Crown, most of their productions have quickly fallen into obscurity and cancellation after one or two seasons.

Such properties are powerful building blocks though and whilst Netflix continues to have huge pockets and a subscriber base that dwarfs any of their competitors, they’re going nowhere anytime soon.