People watch a lot of Netflix, but just how much do they watch? As part of Netflix’s latest earnings briefing, the company revealed the number of hours the average paid subscriber watches: about two hours.
Netflix said this represents “healthy” engagement for the platform, and went on to mention the two-hour figure stands out despite the fact that Netflix now allows people to pay to share accounts.
“As we’ve discussed before, paid-sharing led to lower viewing on accounts that were shared as fewer people were watching on them,” Netflix said. “In addition, when sharers bought their own subscriptions, much of that viewing was already reflected in hours viewed (impacting the trend in view hours per membership).”
Isolating owner households and excluding the impact of paid-sharing, total view hours rose year-over-year so far across the first three quarters of 2024, Netflix said. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said, “Engagement is super healthy.”
Netflix offers some live programming now, too, including the recent hot dog-eating contest between Joey Chestnut and Takeru Kobayashi. This only accounts for a small portion of total viewing, Netflix said, but they will do more in this department going forward. This will include the upcoming Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul fight, and Christmas Day NFL games.
“We’re really excited that we’re going to be capturing even more of the excitement that comes when the whole world gets together to watch something, and that’s really fun part of live,” Sarandos said.
Netflix also has live WWE events coming up in 2025, along with a live talk show from John Mulaney. In general, Netflix said it sees a huge amount of potential to continue to grow in the future, pointing out how Netflix continues to only capture under 10% of total TV time in the biggest countries.
In other news, Netflix recently released the first trailer for The Electric State, the next movie from The Avengers directors Joe and Anthony Russo–it looks incredible.
