For now, Netflix’s viewership is the only sub OTT audience we are able to estimate on a worldwide scale. However, we are slowly building out our projections for two of Netflix’s primary international rivals—Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video—and we can now make some useful comparisons across various markets. We believe Netflix remains the most watched service in the world, but it is not alone at the peak.
Note that our projections are not akin to the various companies’ self-reported subscriber numbers. Our figures try to account for all the viewers in a household—or wider population—who watch content on one of these services at least once per month via any given access point. Once we account for large families, group viewing, and rampant password-sharing, viewership totals can end up nearly triple the number of formally paid subscriptions.
Our goal is to determine for marketers how many pairs of eyeballs are tuning in, regardless of who’s paying and who isn’t: By this measure, Netflix will have an impressive 682.7 million viewers next year. That’s about a third of all the sub OTT users in the world, and almost 15% of all internet users.