It would appear that Netflix is to charge more for users to binge watch.
There’s a brewing potential price hike for Netflix is on the horizon.
Hidden within the depths of Netflix’s shareholder letter, on page six to be precise, was a sentence that probably made every price-conscious consumer do a double take. The statement was pretty clear: “As we invest in and improve Netflix, we’ll occasionally ask our members to pay a little extra to reflect those improvements, which in turn helps drive the positive flywheel of additional investment to further improve and grow our service.”
We’ve been waiting for years for a lot of improvements, but all we’ve seen are ads and prices going up.
Netflix is saying that as they “pour more money” into making their service better, they’ll need to ask us, the users, to chip in a bit more. This isn’t entirely out of the blue. Remember, Netflix launched an advertising tier back in November 2022 while putting the brakes on password sharing. This move was aimed at offering a more wallet-friendly way for users to access the world’s leading streaming service. But here’s the kicker: not as many people have jumped on this new tier as expected. With 23 million monthly active users on this ad-supported plan that’s a pretty big paycheck and now it appears they may raise prices.
Now, let’s put this into perspective. Netflix boasts over 260 million global subscribers, with a whopping 13.1 million added in just the fourth quarter last year—marking their largest Q4 growth ever. This could very well signal to Netflix executives that the majority of their audience doesn’t mind the current subscription fees. A standard subscription in the U.S. is sitting at $15.49 per month, while the ad tier is a more digestible $6.99.
Netflix has recently announced that WWE’s Raw will be hitting the service in 2025. This marks Netflix’s most significant venture into live entertainment, costing them over $5 billion for a decade of Raw. Knowing that WWE fans are going to use the service it would be a good time to raise prices.
Now, while Netflix hasn’t officially announced a price increase or given us a timeline, it’s pretty clear the writing is on the wall. So, what can we do? Well, for starters, it’s all about assessing the value we get from our subscriptions and exploring the vast landscape of streaming services available.
But it may be time to go back to purchasing DVDs.
