Netflix has announced the results of its Q4, revealing it has recorded the most new subscribers from a quarter in the company’s history.
The 19 million new net subscribers contributed to Netflix’s revenue increase of 16% in Q4 year-over-year. The global streaming platform also revealed that it ended 2024 with 302 million subscribers.
Furthermore, operating income exceeded $10bn for the first time in Netflix history, a welcome sign for the company which is now kick-starting its venture into live sports content.
Last year was a pivotal moment not just for Netflix, but the entire sports broadcast industry when the streaming company embarked on its first push in this direction. Netflix live streamed two high-profile NFL games on Christmas Day, which was followed by the launch of the 10-year deal with WWE to stream its weekly Monday show RAW this January.
However, it was November’s Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson boxing exhibition that marked Netflix’s first foray into the world of live sports. The company revealed it became “the most-streamed sporting event ever”, attracting a peak audience of 65 million viewers in concurrent households.
The momentum did not stop there, as on Christmas Day, the two NFL games also became the most-streamed NFL games in history, according to Netflix, with more than 65 million viewers across the US.
The debut episode of RAW on Netflix on 6 January also brought in some of the largest numbers the WWE has seen for one of its flagship weekly shows. The episode attracted 4.9 million viewers globally and averaged 2.6 million in the US, a 116% increase from RAW’s average 2024 audience of 1.2 million households.
Looking ahead, Netflix’s live sports content strategy has only strengthened with the acquisition of US rights to stream the 2027 and 2031 Women’s FIFA World Cup competitions.
As Netflix has previously mentioned, the company is not in the business of acquiring long-term, lengthy sports broadcast rights that have surged in value over recent years. Alternatively, the streaming platform has been scooping rights for one-off or single competitions to maximise its value in the hope of bringing in new subscribers.
A statement from Netflix confirmed: “We’re not focusing on acquiring rights to large regular season sports packages; rather, our live strategy is all about delivering can’t-miss, special event programming. Our aim is to deliver big, memorable moments to our members.
“Although our live programming will likely be a small percentage of our total view hours and content expense, we think the eventized nature will result in outsized value to both our members and our business.”
