News JVTech Following massive cancellations, Netflix takes fright and lowers its prices: and France?
Published on 02/20/2023 at 17:55
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Visibly facing a major wave of unsubscriptions following its decision to no longer allow account sharing, Netflix is currently offering significant discounts in certain countries. An unprecedented situation for the streaming platform.
By preventing its subscribers from sharing their account with their loved ones, Netflix hoped to motivate as many people as possible to invest in additional access to its platform. The SVOD service probably imagined that users were addicted enough to Netflix to be willing to pay more in order to maintain access to the service. In practice, it seems that it does not go as planned.
Netflix faces a leak of subscribers
A few weeks ago, we learned that the blocking of account sharing was coming to many countries: New Zealand, Canada, Portugal and Spain. Europe is now concerned and in France, it could well be soon.
But many Netflix customers took the news very badly. In Spain, Portugal or even Canada, many people have decided to deactivate their account following the arrival of this new restriction. Paying more to continue sharing one’s account with family or friends has not gone down well with subscribers, and while it’s impossible to quantify how many of them decided to unsubscribe, this probably does not please the American company.
Netflix is therefore no longer as popular as it used to be and in some countries the problem seems glaring. This is particularly the case in Latin America, where the platform is facing a significant drain of its subscribers. Bolivia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Cuba, Panama, Honduras, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic and some other territories are concerned. Obviously, in these countries, the drop in subscriptions was significant enough for Netflix to decide to lower the prices of its subscriptions.
On February 13, subscribers (and former subscribers?) of the platform received an email, entitled “The best entertainment now has a lower monthly price”. On the program, very significant price reductions on three subscription formulas.
Bolivia, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Paraguay
Netflix Essential: $3.99 (was $7.99)Netflix Standard: $5.99 (was $10.99)Netflix Premium: $7.99 (was $13.99)
El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Ecuador and Guatemala
Netflix Essential: $4.99 (was $7.99)Netflix Standard: $7.99 (was $10.99)Netflix Premium: $10.99 (was $13.99)
Panama
Netflix Essential: $4.99 (was $8.99)Netflix Standard: $8.99 (was $12.99)Netflix Premium: $12.99 (was $15.99)
Why such aggressive offers? First of all, some countries in Latin America are among those in which Netflix chose to test account sharing blocking early on : this is notably the case of the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Afterwards, the arrival of SkyShowtime in these territories undoubtedly contributed to seeing Netflix’s market share falter : this service advertises 100,000 hours of entertainment for less than 3 euros per month. Something to interest a large number of curious people.
Could Netflix lower its prices in France?
Netflix’s proposal in Latin America is, for the time being, unprecedented. At this stage, there is nothing to indicate that the SVOD platform has similar projects elsewhere: it is moreover the complete opposite of its ambitions, since offering such discounts in a large number of countries will allow it -be to increase its number of subscribers, but probably not to increase its turnover. However, the year is just beginningand no one seems safe from a few twists at Netflix.
