How the streamers are stacking up, year-end edition

In the world of streaming, it’s not a competition. Just kidding! It definitely is.

Now that we’re through another earnings season, we have updates from the major media companies about the global size of their streaming services and their forays into ad-supported streaming in what will likely be our last look at subscriber counts until 2024. While most companies are focused on profitability over sheer scale, size still matters—especially considering the necessary scale advertisers want to see on ad-supported tiers.

Here’s the rundown.

Netflix counted 247 million subscribers worldwide, nearly 9 million more than a quarter prior, ahead of its move to raise prices for ad-free viewing in the US, UK, and France. The company’s ad tier, which is just over a year old, has 15 million subscribers worldwide.

Disney+ ended the quarter with 112.6 million global subscribers, up 7 million from the prior quarter. More than half of new Disney+ subscribers in its most recent quarter opted for an ad-supported tier, CEO Bob Iger said.

• Hulu, which is soon to be fully owned by Disney, ended the quarter with 48.5 million subscribers, relatively flat compared to the prior quarter.
• ESPN+, also owned by Disney, ended the quarter with 26 million subscribers.

Max (fka HBO Max), Discovery+, and some smaller Warner Bros. Discovery-owned streaming services ended the quarter with a combined 95.1 million subscribers, marking the second consecutive quarter of subscriber losses at the company.

• Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav partially blamed the losses on “one of our lightest original content schedules in years” due, in part, to the lengthy writers’ and actors’ strikes.

Paramount+ ended the quarter with 63 million subscribers, 2.7 million more than the prior quarter. Advertising revenue in the company’s DTC sector, which also includes free ad-supported streaming service Pluto TV, was up 18% in the quarter.

Peacock cleared 28 million subscribers at quarter’s end, and is working on developing new ways to monetize streaming viewing, like through shoppable ads.

Moneymaker? As streamers have increasingly focused on profitability, they’ve almost uniformly opted to raise prices on ad-free viewing to incentivize ad-supported watching. That seems to be working: At Warner Bros. Discovery, for instance, streaming segment revenues were up 5% in the quarter despite subscriber shrinkage.