Business

New Netflix price surge. Should Netflix livestream sports?

by MQDuong

Yesterday, Netflix announced their new price structure. Per WSJ:

Netflix will increase the price of its most popular plan 18% to $13 a month from $11. That plan allows users to stream from two screens at the same time. The most basic plan, which allows a single stream in standard definition, will go up one dollar, or 13%, to $9 a month. The new rates will go into effect immediately for new customers and be applied to the accounts of existing customers in the next few months, according to a person familiar with the plans.

The increase in price is not really surprising in my opinion. Netflix has been investing heavily in original content. WSJ reported that the investment would amount up to $12 billion this year. Netflix needs to enlarge its war chest and the additional revenue from the new prices will help with that. It doesn’t hurt that Netflix has some wriggle room to up its prices, according to Priceintelligently. Additionally, as some content owners such as Disney or Warner Media plan to launch their own streaming services, Netflix will likely have to pay more to retain popular shows or movies.

But there is only so much room for increase in subscription prices. If Netflix pushes too hard, they may lose viewers. Consumers will have more options with the arrival of Disney, Warner Media and NBC, in addition to major current players such as HBO, Amazon, Hulu and Showtime. A normal user should not be expected to pay so much for subscriptions every month. Netflix may need to find another area to grow its user base and revenue.

Should Netflix go for sports?

Sports is a hugely important part of our life and hence it is important to businesses that want our money and attention. To see how important sports become to social media and streaming services, here are a few headlines:

The last headline is very interesting. Coming from Vietnam, I can tell you that football (as millions of people in the world outside the US call it) is a religion in my country and hugely popular in that region. Premier League, in particular, attracts football fans in Vietnam in a way that few leagues do. We have to or at least, used to pay for cable TVs to be able to see the games. The service is subpar, and the fees are slightly cheaper than a Netflix subscription. Vietnamese users pay around $8-9 a month for a Netflix subscription while a cable subscription costs around $5-7. If the fans can stream games from their laptops/computers or project games onto TV through Netflix, it will be a game changer. Fans will strongly consider the service, especially with hours of shows and movies as well.  

But does it make sense for Netflix to do so from a business and financial standpoint? Let’s run a scenario.

Together, Vietnam and Thailand have 165 million people in population. The total number of Netflix subscribers in the two countries are just 500,000 (300,000 for Vietnam and 200,000 for Thailand). If we just assume that 40% of the two countries’ population are young from 15 to 40 years of age, fitting the target demographic, I presume, for Netflix, the Total Addressable Market (TAM) is around 66 million for Vietnam and Thailand. I don’t have the number of subscribers in Laos and Cambodia, but if we apply the same assumption to those countries, the TAM is 9.2 million potential subscribers. For the four countries, the TAM is around 75 million.

If a subscriber is worth $8/month and Netflix gains around 100,000 subscribers a year each in Vietnam and Thailand, as well as 50,000 each in Laos and Cambodia, the total revenue can be around $230 million in 3 years, $30 million less than what Facebook pays for its exclusive rights. Also, the total number of subscribers should be at least 1.7 million, barely a fraction of the TAM mentioned above (75 million).

If we increase the subscription price by $1 in the original scenario, the revenue will be around $259 million, almost as much as what Facebook paid.

If the number of subscribers in that scenario goes up by 30%, the revenue in 3 years will be around $300 million and the subscriber count in 4 countries for Netflix will be around 2.06 million, still a small fraction of the TAM.

Of course, all of the above are assumptions which can be way off the mark, but to me, it seems that it is an opportunity there for Netflix. Besides the financials, gaining more subscribers can make Netflix more valuable due to network effect and give them more data about the users. Netflix paid $100 million to keep Friends on its network for a year. Given that amount and the potential upside of providing sports to international markets, I believe Netflix should give it a try. Plus, it can’t afford to see competitors add sports to their selection without doing anything.

I admire the consistency and focus of Netflix. They have been very consistent on their long-term view as a video streaming service. Nonetheless, the situation may necessitate some changes in the future.

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