With Netflix returning to earth, can streaming rivals make gains?
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Investors are punishing Netflix (NFLX
-19.8%) for a fourth-quarter subscriber miss that management downplayed as something of a drop in the bucket - but also for some lackluster current-quarter guidance that raises the question of which rivals could benefit from the streaming giant's woes.

Netflix management indicated in its earnings call Thursday that reaching 8.3 million net adds vs. an expected 8.5 million wasn't much of a miss. Co-CEO Reed Hastings pushed back on the very first question about the miss with a smile, and Chief Financial Officer Spence Neumann noted the shortfall was "just a bit shy, a tenth of a percent on roughly 222 million paying members."

The company guided to just 2.5 million net subscriber additions in Q1 vs. the Q4 guidance of 8.5 million, though - and while that is a seasonally affected number, in the prior year (Q1 of 2021) it added 3.98 million subs globally. Is the addressable streaming market more like Hastings' ever-growing pie - or is there now more room for competitors to make a dent?
What once seemed an insurmountable head-start for Netflix is being sliced into, depending on how you measure subscribers and reach.
The last quarter brought Netflix to 221.8 million subscribers globally. While that figure is often compared favorably to Disney+, Disney the company (DIS
-4.6%) can claim 179 million paid subs - a gap narrowed to 42.8 million subs - when counting its main triumvirate of direct-to-consumer offerings. (Disney+ claims about 118.1 million paid subs, while Hulu adds another 43.8 million and ESPN+ has 17.1 million.)
Amazon Prime Video (AMZN
-3.2%) is often ranked alongside Netflix and Disney as the likely long-term players in the streaming wars, though Prime Video is harder to compare directly, since it's not just payment for streaming but for a large list of Prime member benefits. The company noted in 2021 that about 175 million of its Prime members had streamed content in the prior 12 months, which at least puts it in a sort of ballpark with those two.
Other players are smaller but may be newly emboldened by Netflix's growth struggles. ViacomCBS (VIAC
-4.6%, VIACA
-5%) - sporting its services led by Paramount+ and Showtime OTT - lays claim to 46.7 million paid subscribers and is making progress on a pivot into streaming.
HBO Max (T
-0.6%) is also a tough apples-to-apples streaming comparison: Its baseline streaming offering usually comes at $14.99/month, but not only is that subject to some heavy promotional discounts at the moment, AT&T also counts viewers who pay for HBO through their cable bills. HBO says it reaches 41.7 million eligible viewers either through direct sign-up or a wholesale provider such as cable or virtual MVPDs.
HBO Max is soon to join forces with Discovery (DISCA
-3.2%), which does report paid streaming subs of 20 million across a number of services led by Discovery+. Through its Starz TV offerings, Lions Gate (LGF.A
-1.7%, LGF.B
-1.4%) also has paid subs of 18 million at last report, and (unsurprisingly at that size) it's commonly brought up as a merger/acquisition candidate as the media sector consolidates.
A few other key names are even tougher to measure but also compete with Netflix for streaming attention. NBCUniversal's Peacock (CMCSA
+0.3%) counts its viewers through sign-ups, making revenue comparisons hard since it offers a free tier as well as two different paid tiers. But in recent months it has claimed 54 million sign-ups and more than 20 million active monthly accounts.
The toughest to measure may be Apple TV+ (AAPL
-0.1%), which hasn't provided any details on its offering. In September, The Information reported the service might be changing up its reputation with plans to spend $500 million on marketing - and that Apple had some 40 million subs (half of those paying) at the end of 2020.