Streaming Will Soon Have More Profit Growth Than Subscriber Growth

A new study by Ampere Analysis found that the new streaming ecosystem will be defined by profit growth, while subscriber growth hits the brakes — or, as we like to call it, welcome to a maturing industry.

The Big Picture: Hollywood lost billions of dollars in the transition to streaming to catch up with Netflix, while Wall Street stopped rewarding subscriber growth as a key metric for success. For streamers, a coming era of profits is the light at the end of the tunnel as the backbone of cable revenue collapses.

Behind the Scenes: Ad tiers, password crackdowns, bundling, budget tightening, and the end of Peak TV is finally turning streaming into a moneymaker.

• Ampere found that revenue will outpace subscriber growth by 3x over the next five years — leading to roughly 30% more revenue overall.
• By 2029, the global SVOD market will surpass $190 billion… with Netflix making up about a third of that projection. Whoa.
• $22 billion of that number will come from ad sales as more people sign up for lower-cost, ad-supported tiers.

Closing Credits: All of that’s not to say there won’t be a significant number of new subscribers. Ampere estimates that subscribers will grow by an estimated 200 million people (mostly in the Asia-Pacific region) to a total of two billion people. That’s a major contrast to the growth of the past five, which saw subscriber counts double (COVID really supercharged things). Still, that’s roughly a quarter of the population of Earth. Think about that.