After massive gains during the first stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, net paid subscriber growth at Netflix took a hit in 2021. The latest quarterly results exceeded expectations however, and when comparing to 2020’s Q3 subscriber additions, the 4.4 million added globally in Q3 2021 represent a doubling of last year’s performance which was the smallest third quarter increase since 2012.
So what happened to instigate such a turnaround? Squid Game happened. The Netflix original series from South Korea has become the streaming provider’s biggest ever hit, knocking Bridgerton off the top spot with ease when it comes to the amount of people that watched the show in the first 28 days since release. According to Netflix, two thirds of its subscribers have by now watched at least some of the dystopian survival drama – equating to 142 million accounts.
Netflix is now feeling confident for the near future. Reed Hastings, co-CEO commented: “We’re in uncharted territory. We have so much content coming in Q4 like we’ve never had, so we’ll have to feel our way through and it rolls into a great next year also.”
This chart shows global paid net subscriber additions of Netflix in Q3 from 2012 to 2021.
