Although it’s been just a few weeks since Netflix rolled out its campaign to crack down on password sharing among its U.S. subscribers, early results show a significant increase in new subscriptions.
According to researcher Antenna, May 23-27 marked Netflix’s four single largest days of new subscriptions in the U.S. since Antenna began tracking the service, with nearly 100,000 new subscribers on two of those days.
Average daily sign-ups to Netflix reached 73,000 during the four-day period, a +102% increase from the prior 60-day average. These exceed the spikes in sign-ups Antenna observed during the initial U.S. Covid-19 lockdowns in March and April 2020. Cancels also increased during this period, but not as much as sign-ups. The ratio of sign-ups to cancels since May 23rd is up +25.6% compared to the previous 60-day period.
In 2022, in response to a slowing rate of new subscriptions and declining revenues, the world’s largest streaming service announced that it would begin cracking down on the practice of subscribers sharing their passwords with persons outside of their immediate households. After testing its tracking methods in South America and parts of Europe, Netflix rolled out its new policy on May 23. Netflix estimates that approximately 100 million of its 232.5 million subscribers worldwide have been sharing their passwords with people outside of their households.
When confronted with the new policy, subscribers can either transfer the profile of the person outside of the immediate household in order to get that person to pay for their own subscription or the subscriber add new members outside of their household for $7.99 a month per person.
