For a long time streaming services like Netflix and Amazon have been a bit shy about releasing viewer numbers. Subscriber numbers are often made public only because these companies are publicly listed and shareholders and investors want to know things are looking up.
But it seems Netflix are starting to sense their dominance is going to show in their viewer numbers too.
Today, their “comedy” account tweeted this:
Now, those numbers are staggering – by any measure, but let’s just try and put it in context.
The problem is, the big movie companies don’t operating in bums on seats. Despite selling individual tickets to movies in cinemas, they continue to report based on ticket sale value – which is why we hear about an opening weekend measured in millions of dollars not numbers of people.
So let’s try put that in context for you. Avengers Endgame, easily the biggest movie release of the year – one of the biggest of all time. That epic reported an “Opening weekend” of $831,170,637.
Now critically, ticket prices for movies vary all across the world. But look around a bit and you’ll find that they go as high as an average of $17 or so dollars (US) down to $5.
The US average price is a touch over $9. So – let’s have a non scientific crack at this.
At a $9 average ticket price, 92 million people saw Avengers Endgame.
Makes Adam Sandler’s 30 million look nothing special. But, let’s look at the top 3 movies for 2019.
Endgame we know was $831,170,637 (92 million people).
Second this year is Captain Marvel – with opening weekend gross takings of $426,648,316 – around 47 million people.
Third, and most recently – Aladdin – at $266,440,109 – that works out at just 29.6 million people.
Yep, Adam Sandler’s Netflix movie was seen by more people than the Number 3 movie of the year.
In fact, probably way more. Netflix is reporting “accounts”, that doesn’t take into account additional people sitting on the lounge watching it – quite frankly the number of people is probably double.
To counter that, it must be said that the number of people who walk out of a movie is probably very low – while we don’t know how many of those “accounts” chose to watch the movie all the way through.
So – based on that, let’s stick with 30 million – and we have to call Adam Sandler’s flick the third biggest movie of the year!
It looks like streaming might just find its legitimacy in numbers after all.
And it’s not just numbers too – we’re starting to see show rankings in the UK:
And if this success continues, expect this to grow.
