We all know that streaming services have different movie and show offerings based on the country you are watching in, but what about different prices? As it turns out, until recently most of the big streaming companies stuck to a flat rate across the board. Having a streaming service cost $8 whether your in England or in Ghana may seem fair on the surface, but when you take into account the volatility of different currencies, the service could easily become financially unobtainable in certain areas. Since most streaming services price their product based on US dollars, a country experiencing 500% inflation of their local currency also will see a 500% increase in the cost of these services. Imagine “having Netflix money” as a sign of wealth and luxury in these areas.
The streaming services have recently realized this problem and have developed ideas in which to combat it while continuing to grow their share of the market in these developing countries. Prior, poor countries could sometimes be paying up to double what a more stable nation would. Netflix began this movement with cutting its pricing in Sub-Saharan Africa by almost 50%. They also moved away from their single subscription model and designed different tiers based on regions. Its strange to see that in these regions the companies are looking for cheaper ways to deliver their products while in their traditional markets they’ve begun focusing on cracking down on account sharing.
The other major players (Amazon Prime and Disney+) have since followed suit. The companies who use to battle for market share based on creating quality programing now see the new battle for price. With continued industrialization, these companies see the emerging markets as the next frontier for the services. The local markets are view as being mature markets, especially after the boom of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns. Whereas the developing nations did not have this same level of growth due to lack of high speed internet access and a shorter lockdown period. While developing markets currely only account for 5.5% of the streaming giants’ profits, they are expected to grow rapidly in the coming ten years due to increased urbanization and globalized developments in technology.
SOURCES
https://www.statista.com/statistics/483112/netflix-subscribers/