With 282.7 million subscribers worldwide, Netflix closed the third quarter of 2024 adding 5 million customers to its balance — a performance that could have been even better if the platform had not lost contracts in Latin America for the first time in the year. It is an unexpected turn for the company, and at a decisive moment: the streaming is about to launch its two biggest projects aimed at the regional market.

Em November 29th, Senna’s debut takes placebiographical drama about Ayrton Senna (1960-1994), one of the greatest drivers in the history of Formula 1. Less than two weeks later, on December 11, The first part of One Hundred Years of Solitude arrivesadaptation of the work by Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014).

These are millionaire series and with global appealbut which should work even better in Brazil and Colombia, respectively. And Senna is a necessary bet for Netflix in the national market, which has already been champion of regional productions to the platform in the past, but has lost space to South Korean phenomena (and other countries) in recent years.

According to data released by Netflix itself, its subscriber base worldwide jumped from 277 million at the end of June to 282 million in September. The growth was driven mainly by the Apac (Asia and Pacific) blocks, which added 2.2 million new contracts, and Emea (Europe, Middle East and Africa), with 2.1 million. Latin America was the only one to shrink, with the loss of 68 thousand customers in the quarter, something that has not happened since March 2023.

The entertainment giant’s own executives estimate that the regional drop occurred because of the price increase on subscriptions carried out at the end of May. The cheapest plan, with ads, rose to R$20.90. The most expensive, Premium, reached R$59.90 per month.

“The small decrease you saw is mainly due to recent price changes in the largest markets in Latin America, which always affect short-term growth,” admitted Spencer Neumann, Netflix’s CFO, at the quarterly earnings meeting with shareholders.

“But the good news is that we are already seeing a recovery. Subscriptions in Latin America are growing again — and, a curious fact, if the third quarter had lasted one more day, the balance would have been positive. So, we are calm”, he minimized responsible for the company’s finances.

What leads Netflix to increase subscriptions?

In the same meeting, co-CEO Greg Peters explained what leads Netflix to increase the amount charged to its subscribers from time to time. In addition to the obvious reason, the search for more revenue, the company adopts a more bureaucratic (and friendly) explanation related to the content offered.

“Our central theory is that we work really hard to deliver greater value to subscribers every quarter. And then we check with engagement, acquisition and retention metrics to see if we did a good job and delivered everything we were promising,” began Peters .

“If we can do this, from time to time we ask subscribers to pay a little more, so we can invest in more content and keep the process going. We’ve done this in Europe, in Japan, in several countries, and the results have always been within of expectation [de retenção de clientes]”, continued the executive.

“We are always checking the signals to understand when it is appropriate to ask subscribers to increase the amount they pay. But we are also increasing the quality and variety of our offering films and series, and we will expand into new areas such as live shows, com a WWE and the struggle of Mike Tyson and Jake Paul, Games NFL no Natal… These are exciting news, and with them we feel we can continue the monetization cycle”, he concluded.