A new ComScore report has confirmed what many expected — Netflix is dominating the streaming video market. What’s particularly impressive about this confirmation is the fact that Netflix isn’t just far and away the number one streaming platform in town, it crushes the competition. In fact, Netflix gets more viewing time than Amazon, Hulu and YouTube combined.
The report is especially interesting in that Netflix’s prime viewing hours are in-line with what many expect from traditional TV — 8-11pm est. Additionally, people watch Netflix for an average of one hour and forty minutes a day per household. Netflix is essentially becoming TV. It’s the standard in 54 percent of U.S. homes.
With those numbers and market share, you’d think that Netflix was this monolithic outlet that’s here to revive your favorite shows and deliver you almost everything you could ever want with the click of a few buttons, but the combined forces of streaming services such as Twitch and YouTube beat out Netflix.
According to the latest SuperData report, more people watch game streams than HBO, Netflix, ESPN, and Hulu combined. They state the “worldwide gaming video content audience” includes 665 million people and will grow by 21 percent by 2021, with Twitch being the company raking in the cash (and also barely edges out Netflix for the amount of time spent watching content, coming in at an average of one hour and forty-six minutes per session).
Here’s the caveat: Netflix users pay roughly 20 cents per hour of content viewed, while Twitch and YouTube are ad-based. If you put ads on Netflix, the average user would be watching over 160 hours of ads per year. So are the numbers for game streams fudged by users twiddling their thumbs while they wait to watch their favorite streamer? And will game streaming, still considered niche, ever make its way to the absolute mainstream, or has it already made it?
And what happens when Netflix finally becomes available in China?
(Via Mashable)
