What next in the battle of the streaming platforms?

What next for Netflix and co. in the face of the plummeting streaming market?

Come at the king, you better not miss

Most of us would probably agree that streaming services are a force for good. Getting the movies or shows you like at the click of a button is a luxury that our parents might not have imagined back when they were digging around Blockbuster in the nineties.

Despite Netflix having ruled the roost for so long, the streaming turf war is turning into a dog fight – and the stakes are high. After disclosing its first quarterly drop in subscribers in more than a decade, along with a warning that subscribers may fall over the long term, ‘the old king is wounded. Shares are down over 67% from the start of the year, slashing the company’s worth to around $86 billion, so unfortunately, ’tis more than but a scratch.

With this in mind, it should be prime time for a new leader to claim the throne. But looking at the bigger picture, it’s clear that Netflix isn’t the only one that’s taken a hit.

Out of ideas  

The pandemic caused a boom for streaming services that couldn’t last forever. What else were we going to do when we were stuck inside for months at a time? Now, though, the market is falling off a cliff edge. Just look at Disney, which has seen stocks on the Dow Jones drop down by around 30%. HBO and HBO max are also down bad, dropping 20% since the company’s stock began trading in April.

Staring down the barrel of a nosediving market and sinking profits, what are the streaming giants to do? The next move for the likes of Netflix and Disney could well prove to be the sink or swim moment. Disney plans to hurl $33 billion at streaming content in 2022, while Netflix has announced plans to move towards ad-supported streaming to boost profits and lower subscriber costs.

As the board rooms put their heads together and try to salvage victory from the jaws of defeat though, the likely victor in all this could be the platform that does something different. Something fresh and exciting. What that is though, we can’t tell you – unless you want to give us a seat on the board.