How Streaming Competitors Will Set the Industry back to Square One. Akeel (ECO04)

With the recent success of Netflix every major entertainment company is trying to set up their own streaming service. But with products such as HBO, Apple TV, Disney Plus and Amazon Prime won’t this put the consumers back to square one?

The success of Netflix has caused a surge in premium streaming services. Netflix has attributed its success to being the only fish in its own pond. While cable TV allowed people to watch, Netflix enabled consumers to watch almost any show for a monthly cost of $10. When Netflix started delivering content digitally, its popularity sky rocketed. After all they were the only business supplying the consumers exact want when cable TV couldn’t. This allowed for Netflix to get a compound growth of 10% annually. Netflix had such a massive impact that even piracy rates were dropping and people were switching to Netflix.

With the success that Netflix has had unrivaled for over a decade has brought in new challengers. HBO, Apple TV, Disney +, Hulu and Amazon Prime to name a few have all taken up the challenge to rival Netflix, all just within a few years. And their marketing strategy is very simple. Own the rights to a must watch show and make people pay the premium $10 a month to watch it. HBO has Game of Thrones, Netflix has their originals, Apple has multiple directors under their belt, Disney has every Disney movie ever and Amazon is in the making of a Lord of the Rings TV show. All massive companies with even bigger titles. The hope is that the demand sky rockets for a must see show (say Game of Thrones for example) and that people will be willing to pay a mere $10 a month to watch it as it premieres. However, this only worked as for there was very few suppliers of great content. Now the tables have turned and there are too many suppliers all competing for viewing time.

With all these new players in the market, consumers have gone back to where they have started. A want to consume TV shows with ease. The marketing tactic of exclusivities being able to force consumers to pay will simply not work. It sends back to the same struggle people had cable TV only this time with a pay wall. For most people who cant afford the streaming services and cant wait months for exclusivity to expire, the only option remaining is that of piracy. Piracy is a dark hole for businesses as for content they have spent millions to produce provides no returns as for it is viewed from a dodgy website probably hosted in the depths of Russia. Businesses would simply like to avoid the increased use of piracy.

With piracy inevitably on the rise, and a more crowded streaming place, the first world problem of keeping up to date with the latest TV shows and movies only gets harder. To those of us who have $70 to spend a month on premium services do what you must. But to most of us who cant, two doors present us. One of patience and time in which we can view our shows months later, or the dark force of piracy.