☀️NETFLIX Q4 🎤 Drop Ushers ‘25 Revenue, Ad Biz Boom
Sydney Sweeney in talks for A24 Poe pic / LEGENDARY expands in new JV / UNRIVALED 🏀 debut numbers
Mornin! This is Sean McNulty (connect with me on LinkedIn here if ya like or email me at seanmcnultynyc@gmail.com), and here’s the Hollywood + Media news to know on WEDNESDAY, January 22, 2025.
Where yeah, I dunno . . . call me bonkers, but gotta say the rumblings of Larry Ellison having a tough time getting his PARAMOUNT deal through the Trump administration may be a bit overblown? 🤷♂️
OH: Yeah, that’s from the announcement for PROJECT STARGATE (Kurt Russell’s involvement pending), a JV between OPENAI, ORACLE and SOFTBANK to build $500B worth of energy ‘campuses’ to power AI.
An announcement where Trump called Ellison the “CEO of everything” and also said he’d like for Larry to be part of a 50% sale of TIKTOK. So, maybe we’ll just call the faint rumblings of that CBS NEWS settlement an Ellison donation.
BUT: Inauguration viewership was down — this is across 15 networks, and essentially a total-day average of viewing:
2025: 24.6M
17.4M were over 55.
10.7M were on FOX NEWS alone.
CNN was 1.8M, MSNBC was 880k.
That order was CNN (10M), MSNBC (6.5M) and FOX NEWS (2.7M) for Biden’s.
2021: 33.8M (Biden)
2017: 30.6M (Trump #1)
2013: 20.6M (Obama #2)
2009: 37.8M (Obama #1)
PLUS: Bill Burr and Shane Gillis are doing a show at the WILTERN THEATER on Mon., Jan. 27 to benefit the Wildfire Relief Fund (tix on sale here now).
THEN: Trevor Noah is your Grammys host . . . as apparently the show didn’t have a host just, uh, less than 2 weeks before the show. 😳
ALSO: Here is your December-ish Gauge from NIELSEN — Nov. 25 thru Dec. 29, so Thanksgiving and Christmas included, but NYE is not.
NETFLIX tied its all-time highest monthly share at 8.5%, +14% from November.
Thanks, NFL Carry-On and Squid Game first-4 days combo!
Even subtracting the NFL, NETFLIX would’ve been +11% vs. November.
YOUTUBE’s still killin’ it — that 11.1% is also a record-high share.
AMAZON also got up to a 4% share, Red One and Beast Games were both the biggest contributors, although certainly the 5 TNF games in the period helped.
ROKU topped TUBI once again in the FAST space (increasing its lead by 0.2%), with both far ahead of PLUTO.
THEN: The FTC put a 5-year ban on GM from selling your driving data (collected via ONSTAR) to third parties, which could then . . . say, oh I dunno, share/sell it to insurers, after GM was caught doing so without drivers’ permission.
GM must also ask for explicit consent to collect this data going forward, and ONSTAR customers can request a copy of what data GM has on them (and to request that it be deleted).
OH: Texas sued an ALLSTATE subsidiary for illegally tracking driver behavior via its app as well.
Regulation? Who needs regulation? Big business always looks out for its customers first!
IN THIS EDITION:
Just how much is your NETFLIX #PriceHike money going to boost the company’s fortunes in 2025? Not to spoil it — but NETFLIX will have no problem writing the check for the $80M in 2024 co-CEO comp package for Greg & Ted (combined). Then again, when your stock is up 83% in a year . . . perhaps that’s a bargain.
ALSO: Take a look at how adoption of the ad tier changed over the past year and where the ad biz stands as 2025 begins.
Understand the week 2 NETFLIX WWE audience numbers, and what we’ll be getting going forward.
PLUS: How UNRIVALED did in its league debut on TNT and the NFL Divisional Playoff audience comps to know.
PLUS: Due to the holiday — the weekly Tuesday New Jobs list is today!
NETFLIX joins #PriceHike cavalcade just as subscribers go behind the curtain
TOPLINE ITEMS
U.S. Price hikes for all!
AD TIER: $8 a month (+$1 or +14%)
AD-FREE: $18 a month (+$2.50 or +16%)
The last hike here was Jan. ’22, or basically before the U.S. inflation problem took off.
BOUGIE: $25 a month (+$2 or +9%)
Hey, someone’s gotta pay for Shonda’s deal . . . and that person is you.
ALSO: I predicted this exact timeline back in October (okay fine, I’m 10 days short — but I’m taking the win). Comes free with your Ankler subscription!
$18B annual content spend for 2025, up from $17B in 2024
Remember — $500M of that $1B increase goes right to the WWE.
+18.9M subs added globally in Q4 ’24.
Biggest quarter ever (Q1 2020 #Covid being the previous global high at 15.8M) — but it’s the U.S. comps below that are really quite astounding. 🤯
Again, this is the last quarterly subscriber update we’ll get from NETFLIX.
It’s also very likely the last insight we’ll ever get by region (including US/CAN).
Expert analyst predictions here were way off (11M to 13M) — so keep this in mind when you see outside / 3rd-party estimates put out there in the future . . . that will no longer be verified (i.e. corrected) by actual NETFLIX data.
Next NETFLIX Viewership Data Dump comes in February (for H2 ’24). I’m sure it’ll be on the same day as the DISNEY call. 🙄 🤦♂️
Future dumps will arrive with the Q2 and Q4 earnings reports each year (so, late July and late January).
Still zero material 💰 insight into the NETFLIX ad biz, despite it being a very key component of the company’s future growth.
I’m thinking / 🙏 this changes in the 2025 reports — and there are some important ad-tier adoption trends to note — I break this down below.
NETFLIX stock was +14% last night, nearing $1,000 a share.
Numbers in a vacuum are always great 🙄, so let’s dive into all of these numbers mean, especially in the context of other streamers, some key numbers that weren’t in the headlines yesterday and what lies ahead in 2025 — starting with . . .