In the Streaming Wars, content is your ammunition, but the biggest weapon a platform has is its subscriber count. How can you attract top-tier talent unless you’re making lots of money to pay for it? And how do you make lots of money unless you have millions and millions paying a monthly fee to access the content? This is why the month-to-month subscriber count from the biggest streaming platforms is a closely guarded secret. That is unless you have something to celebrate, like Netflix eclipsing 200 million and Disney+ beating all projects in its sprint to 100+ million subs. Well, out of all of the major streaming services, the one that is most elusive when it comes to subscriber counts is Apple TV+. But based on a recent report, there might be a good reason for that secrecy.
According to Variety, it appears that Apple TV+ might have let slip its subscriber count in a negotiation with the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). You see, there are certain thresholds of subscriber counts that allow for streaming platforms to get discounted rates for crew members. And because of that, Apple TV+ reportedly told IATSE that the service currently has under 20 million subscribers. Interestingly, since Apple still gives long free trials to new subscribers that recently bought Apple hardware, it’s unclear how many of the fewer than 20 million are actually paying for the service.
All that to say, if the number is accurate and Apple TV+ currently has fewer than 20 million subscribers, paying or not, then that would put the platform well below its competition. Like, WAY below.
Obviously, no one is expecting Apple TV+ to compete with Netflix after less than two years, so you can’t fault the company for not having more than 200 subscribers worldwide like the biggest streamer on the planet. But when you compare it to folks like Disney+, HBO/HBO Max, Amazon Prime, and Hulu, it just really shows how much farther Apple TV+ has to go to really compete on that sort of scale.
Based on age, Disney+ and Apple TV+ are relatively the same, both debuting less than two years ago. But Disney+ currently has approximately 116 million subscribers across the world, dwarfing Apple. Then you have HBO Max, which launched months after Apple’s platform. However, the WarnerMedia streamer loves to count HBO subscribers in the mix, so when you say that HBO Max has 67 million subscribers, that doesn’t mean only Max people. Amazon Prime Video touts more than 200 subscribers, but that’s including people that pay for the service to get free shipping on toilet paper, so it’s hard to know how many actively watch Prime Video content.
All that to say, the best comparison might actually be Hulu, which is under the Disney umbrella but only has 43 million subscribers. Sure, Hulu has been around a lot longer and does differ from Apple TV+ in its content offered (there are multiple payment tiers plus live TV). However, it’s really the only major streaming service that has anywhere near as few as Apple TV+.
Obviously, Apple is one of the biggest companies in the world and there’s no worry about TV+ going out of business or shutting down. And the tech company doesn’t need the subscriber payments to fund projects. But in the Streaming Wars, numbers matter, and TV+ needs to compete with the big platforms or it’s going to slide into irrelevancy.