If Netflix really decided one day to block the sharing of subscriptions in Italy, to try to recover revenues, the number of overall users would probably collapse. According to a recent time2play survey, commissioned to the specialist Prolific, 84% of the 4.6 million Italian Netflix subscribers usually share accesses with an average of 2.7 friends and / or relatives. This means that the experience of this streaming platform now affects more than nine million people. The problem is that the audience is such thanks to the lack of computer fences and poles. But perhaps it is time to explain the mechanism first.
The season ticket carousel
The Netflix Standard and Premium subscriptions respectively allow simultaneous viewing on two and four screens. This means that at the same time different people who may live far away can enjoy different content on TV, smartphone, tablet and other devices. And so a Premium subscription that nominally costs 17.99 euros per month can be split between four friends and allow for a single monthly outlay of less than 4.5 euros.
Moreover, this possibility has contributed to the success of the Italian startup Together Price, which since 2017 has gradually allowed more of one million users in Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States to connect with other people to legally share subscriptions to online services and software.
“Sharing acts positively on two steps of the funnel (the funnel through which the consumer is led to purchase, ed): on acquisition and on retention“, explains the co-founder and CMO of Together Price, Sabrina Taddei. “With the promise of savings, a natural word of mouth is generated that converts even those who would never have purchased a full-price subscription into a customer. Not to mention the reduction in the phenomenon of intermittent subscriptions, which are activated and then suspended based on the contents”.
Obviously, the subscriptions always include only one holder but in the case of Netflix you can still enable profiles for each of the participants. The company points out that this sharing should take place within the same family unit, even if in the past it said that “love is sharing a password”.
“In 2016 the only shared subscription in Italy was Netflix“, Taddei recalls.” In 2022 it is in the list of the top 5 most shared season tickets, a tangible sign of how not only the competition has grown but also the offer of shared plans“.
In short, it is not clear whether the US giant will have the courage to electrify the fences, but in the meantime it has started testing. in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru of two features. One allows you to add extra (family) members for a fee to the Standard and Premium plans, and the other allows you to transfer your profile to a new account. It is not a declaration of war, but the spirit of the initiative is clear because according to Netflix uncontrolled sharing reduces the ability to invest in new projects.
Streaming is mostly shared
According to the time2play survey, the regions with the highest percentage of shared accounts are Valle d’Aosta (95%), Basilicata (95%), Liguria (94%), Puglia (90%) and Umbria (90%). At the bottom of the ranking instead: Molise (33%) and Friuli Venezia Giulia (70%).
Going further, it turns out that 46% of respondents confirm that they pay for their account, while the remaining 54% admit to using that of friends or relatives. Then among those who pay and share over 66% cut the costs or in any case ask for something in return.
Finally to the key question – “if Netflix decided to block account sharing” – 71.2% of platform users said they would not pay for a subscription. A striking fact that should probably put Netflix on alert, especially considering that 61.6% of the sample admitted to also making use of streaming services or pirated Torrent tools.
It does not help to discover that the interviewees already consider the monthly figure of 16.87 euros expensive, when the current Premium subscription is more than one euro higher.
Piracy and competition
In 2013 Kelly Merryman, vice president of content acquisition at Netflix, concurrent with the platform’s landing in the Netherlands candidly admitted that the success of films and series in the pirate circuits contributed to the composition of the offer on the platform. “Certainly the Torrent goes on, and this is true all over the world, but in part it only creates demand,” said the CEO of the company. Reed Hastings a Tweakers.
If there is at least one attribute that has always distinguished Netflix it is pragmatism; It is difficult to imagine that a company that started by renting DVDs by mail could be without it. And in fact, instead of getting involved in an ideological debate on piracy, it has always pushed the accelerator on the quality of the streaming experience by focusing on ease of use, usability and breadth of the catalog. The real challenge, as Hastings has always recognized, is in licensing and distribution rights. Most (53.1%) of the Italian Netflix subscribers of the time2play survey admitted that this is the reason they watch pirated content: some titles are not available in streaming on the platform.
Ironically Netflix has never managed to get the rights to one of the most successful titles in the history of streaming (and piracy), Game of thrones. The Hbo production house has always returned every request to the sender and today, speaking of its Hbo Max streaming platform, it seems to want to throw a gauntlet to the opponent by calling into question the concept of family subscription. “We’ll take a look at the data and figure out what better course of action is coming to fruition,” Brad Wilson, Warner Media’s vice president of development, told Ign last year of the value of friend groups.
According to Taddei, as competition in the streaming market increases, the most complex challenge is to keep subscribers. “Pursuing or repressing sharing is a mistake because it would push the user to abandon the service, while accepting that people share how and when they want, paying a little more, is a fair compromise that will be accepted and shared “, concludes the Together Price manager.