Netflix Has Almost As Many Paying Subscribers As All The Top Cable TV Companies, Combined

April 3, 2017

This article is included in these additional categories:

Media & Entertainment | Pay-TV & Cord-Cutting | Television | Video

The Leichtman Research Group (LRG) recently released its latest estimates of pay-TV subscriber trends, this time covering end-of-year figures for 2016. Armed with this data – and our ongoing analysis of Netflix paying subscribers – we decided to take a look at how Netflix’s audience size measures up to the top pay-TV providers.

Here’s what we found (all data as of end of 2016):

  • Netflix now has 47.9 million paying subscribers in the US;
  • Netflix’s US paying subscriber count has almost doubled in the past 4 years;
  • The 47.9 million paying subscribers for Netflix rivals the estimated 48.65 million for all of the top cable companies, combined;
  • The number of cable company subscribers has fallen from 51.3 million 4 years ago; and
  • Netflix has twice as many paying subscribers in the US than any single pay-TV provider, with Comcast (22.5 million), a cable company, and DIRECTV (21 million), a satellite company, leading among pay-TV providers; and
  • Netflix has close to half as many paying subscribers as the entire pay-TV provider market.

Obviously that doesn’t translate to revenues, as consumers typically spend about 10 times more on pay-TV services than they do on Netflix.

So it’s an academic idea, but if you’re looking for a sense of Netflix’s size relative to the country’s top pay-TV providers, the two charts in this article should give you that!

Chart-Library-Ad-1

Explore More Articles.

Which Skills Are Important in RevOps?

Which Skills Are Important in RevOps?

9 in 10 RevOps professionals view data analysis skills as being important, a high percentage also don’t believe they need this skill for their job.

Marketing Charts Logo

Stay on the cutting edge of marketing.

Sign up for our free newsletter.

You have Successfully Subscribed!

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This