Netflix (NFLX) Series Stranger Things 4 Sets Viewership Record
Netflix’s NFLX popular original series, Stranger Things Season 4 has become the second series to hit a billion hours of viewing time, after 2021's Korean survival-thriller Squid Game, which clocked in 1.65 billion hours in its first 28 days.
This milestone comes after the show's fourth season concluded with the second volume of the final two episodes, which were released on Jul 1, according to streamers’ internal tracking. The first seven episodes earned 930.32 million hours during their first 28 days, while episodes eight and nine contributed 301.28 million hours to total viewing time during the Jun 27 to Jul 3 week.
Last weekend, Stranger Things stayed in the top 10 series on Netflix in 93 countries around the world. The science-fiction drama, starring Winona Ryder and Millie Bobby Brown, has become the first television series in the English language and the second TV series overall to surpass one billion hours of viewing time.
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Netflix Enjoys Growing Popularity of Original Content
Of late, Netflix has been witnessing a rise in viewership of its popular content portfolio. The third season of The Umbrella Academy came in second on the Netflix Top 10 Series Chart with 88 million hours viewed.
Meanwhile, the comedy series Man vs. Bee had 25.4 million hours viewed. The final season of Peaky Blinders pulled in an additional 18.4 million hours viewed.
The dynamic duo of Kevin Hart and Woody Harrelson held the No. 1 spot on the English films list as The Man From Toronto had 62.6 million hours viewed. Love & Gelato had 18.9 million hours viewed and was in the top 10 Netflix series list. Adam Sandler’s Hustle had an additional 14.6 million hours viewed during the week. Nollywood drama Glamour Girls debuted at #5 with 12.4 million hours viewed.
On the non-English TV list, Money Heist: Korea — Joint Economic Area came in first for the second week in a row with 49 million hours viewed. Following the launch of the series, La Casa de Papel/Money Heist, Part 1, it entered the list in the ninth spot with 8.6 million hours viewed. Spanish drama Intimacy maintained its standing on the list with 10.8 million hours viewed.
New entrants on the list included the Korean drama Alchemy of Souls with 9.9 million hours viewed, Japanese anime series Bastard!! — Heavy Metal, Dark Fantasy with 8.9 million hours viewed and Polish drama Queen with 7.4 million hours viewed.
This comes amid growing competition from the likes of Apple AAPL owned Apple TV+, Amazon’s AMZN Prime Video and Disney’s DIS Disney+, with popular shows available on both.
Squid Game star, Hoyeon will soon make her Apple TV+ debut with Disclaimer. Apple has been expanding its genre base to attract varied viewers, as is evident from its foray into the live sports streaming space. Apple TV+ has won exclusive rights to broadcast Major League Soccer ("MLS") worldwide, starting from 2023 for 10 years.
Disney recently began offering its streaming service, Disney+, in 16 countries across the Middle East and North Africa. Given the breadth of content of Disney+, the streaming platform is expected to grab the second spot, with a subscriber base of 6.5 million in the region by 2027, trailing only Netflix, which is likely to have a viewer base of 11 million per Digital TV Research data. Amazon is expected to outperform Starzplay, with 4.8 million subscribers, to grab the third spot.
In the year-to-date period, Netflix’s shares have tumbled 69.2% compared with the Zacks Broadcast Radio and Television industry’s and the Zacks Consumer Discretionary sector’s declines of 55.9% and 34.4%, respectively.
This Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company’s underperformance is primarily attributed to stiff competition in the streaming space. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.
Nevertheless, Netflix’s diversified content portfolio, attributable to heavy investments in the production and distribution of localized, foreign-language content, is a key catalyst.
Netflix is expected to add 5.29, 4.7 and 3.7 million subscribers in 2022, 2023 and 2024, respectively, in APAC. It has renewed a raft of its Asian originals lately, including Korean hits like Squid Game, teen zombie horror All Of Us Are Dead, and D.P.
The company has been leveraging the talent of local producers in Asia lately and some of its bets have turned into home runs, such as The White Tiger and Crash Landing on You.
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