This past week, Netflix announced during its quarterly financial investors call that, starting in 2025, it will no longer report how many subscribers it has each quarter. The streaming service has stated that it doesn’t view this data as important as other metrics it tracks.

Last year, Netflix also stopped providing guidance on how many subscribers it would have in advance, and it will no longer report on the average revenue per subscriber it makes.  Instead, now Netflix is focusing on how much money and profit it is making.

Netflix’s decision to stop providing subscriber numbers in 2025 didn’t go down well with Wall Street investors, and the company’s stock dropped around 9% this week.

For years, Wall Street was only interested in how many subscribers a streaming service had and was constantly pushing companies to keep increasing the amount of subscribers.   All the studios, including Disney, continued to push forward, creating as many originals as possible to engage with new subscribers and launch in as many countries as possible to keep growing.

But then, Wall Street flipped, instead focusing on profitability, which changed how many studios, including Disney, operated. Instead, they are now focusing on reducing costs and the amount of original programming they create.  Adding in ad-supported tiers and raising prices.

With Netflix being the most popular and largest streaming service, whatever it does, the other platforms generally follow, and with Netflix stopping informing investors how many subscribers it has, this will likely have a ripple effect across the industry as executives at other studios will likely look to see if they can make similar changes. 

However, the big drop in Netflix’s stock may cause some of the studios to hold off on making a similar move, but if one or more streaming platforms make the same shift, we will likely see them all follow suit, since it will allow them to take some of the heat off losing subscribers.

Disney has had plenty of bad headlines about losing subscribers, especially in India, where it lost over 20 million subscribers following the loss of the rights to the Indian Cricket League. So, reducing the chance of additional bad publicity will undoubtedly appeal to executives.

I’d still expect the streaming services to toot their own horn if they reach significant milestones in subscriber numbers and want to share the positive news, but this shift for Netflix is a major change in the streaming wars, which has become so hyper-focused on subscriber numbers.  However, it will also focus more on how much these platforms are making and how Wall Street investors react long-term to having less information on which to base their investments. 

Do you think Disney will follow Netflix’s lead?  Let us know on social media!

Roger Palmer

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUK Facebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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