Netflix, HBO, and Disney earnings present the streaming growth is over

Right here’s an ordinary streaming TV joke/criticism: There are such a lot of completely different companies that somebody ought to simply put all of them collectively, and you then’d simply pay one month-to-month payment for every little thing. You understand, identical to cable TV!

Ho ho ho.

The factor is, not one of the individuals operating streaming TV companies suppose there are going to be a ton of TV companies sooner or later. They suppose they may ultimately consolidate into a couple of large gamers.

We’re already seeing a few of that, which is why Warner Brothers Discovery is on the point of launch a yet-to-be-named service that can mash up HBO Max and Discovery Plus, which suggests you’ll have the ability to pay for White Lotus and Dr. Pimple Popper with one month-to-month invoice. Cautious what you want for!

Within the meantime, when you take a look at Wall Road earnings stories, you possibly can see fairly clearly why typical business knowledge is that the business goes to get smaller, at the least by way of suppliers: It’s actually, actually costly to run a streamer, particularly firstly.

And when you don’t wish to dig by public filings, don’t fear, we’ve performed it for you. Right here’s a fast snapshot of the cash Netflix made within the first 9 months of 2022, and the cash lots of the would-be Netflixes misplaced:

There are some caveats right here, together with the truth that we’re utilizing barely completely different definitions of earnings and losses for every streamer as a result of they every use completely different ones of their filings. Add to that the truth that Warner Bros. Discovery’s whole is decrease than it ought to be as a result of we solely had two quarters of knowledge accessible for this chart.

However the large image is that there’s a ton of pink ink, and there can be a lot, way more if we 1) went again additional as a result of a few of these companies have been bleeding cash for a number of years and a pair of) may see the P&Ls of Apple and Amazon, that are burning large piles of cash on streaming however are so large that it doesn’t matter to them or their buyers (for now).

This chart additionally explains why reveals you like (however different individuals don’t) usually tend to disappear now than they’ve prior to now: A few years in the past, Wall Road was telling media corporations that they need to emulate Netflix and fear about development, not losses. That modified final 12 months, for Netflix and for everybody else. Now, Netflix founder Reed Hastings preaches the deserves of working revenue, and his opponents are speaking about rationalizing prices.

Streaming isn’t going away. Knowledge agency Ampere Evaluation predicts world content material spending will hit $243 billion this 12 months. That’s a 2 p.c improve, and it’s down fairly a bit from the 6 p.c development we noticed in 2022. However it’s means, means up from the $128 billion we noticed a decade in the past. You’re nonetheless going to have lots of selection for a very long time.