The UK demand for American streaming giants Netflix is growing increasingly prominent, and it has been proven to milestone effect this week after a study hinted at the latest subscriber figures.
Research by BARB and Enders Analysis suggests that over 3 million UK households now have subscription-based access to Netflix, a figure that while still smaller (both literally and population-proportionately) than in the USA, is growing fast.
Statistically, it is noted that Netflix UK now has twice as many subscribers as they did at the same point last year, with around 10% of all households in the country being registered to the streaming platform, and the ‘3 million’ figure multiplied for number of potential viewers, given the natural nature of a ‘household’.
The combined research had been taken through a sample of 13,500 households in the UK, with their total already at 2.8m at the end of March. As in America, it appears as though Netflix’s position in the streaming market is the same with having rivals but being quite clearly ahead in subscriber numbers, with their closest rival currently being Amazon Prime Instant Video (formerly LoveFilm), who in the UK reach 1.2m homes, just over a third of what Netflix draws.
The project’s leader, Toby Syfret, stated: “Netflix has always been highly secretive and released very few details about its international streaming performance in individual countries beyond the general statement that it is seeing encouraging progress everywhere. Not since Netflix’s announcement in August 2012 that its total subscriber base in the UK and Ireland had passed the one million mark, have we heard any numbers from the horse’s mouth.”
Having worked well on the younger audiences with double Amazon’s ’16-24′ demographic totals, Netflix in the UK is going from strength to strength, and at its rate of progression, could an end target of beating satellite TV provider Sky (currently on 10m homes) be a realistic one for the streamers?