• by Wayne Friedman , December 2, 2019

With over 100 worldwide digital and pay TV distribution partnerships -- covering 300 million subscribers, according to Ampere Analysis -- Netflix's potential subscriber footprint is nearly double that of its current worldwide subscriber total.

In the third quarter of this year, Netflix posted 158 million subscribers -- 60.62 million U.S. subscribers and 97.71 million international subscribers. The numbers were up versus the second quarter by around 500,000 and 6.25 million, respectively.  

At the end of 2018, North America had the highest availability for Netflix, with 86% of pay/digital TV subscribers who can access the service. This number was 75% of all pay/digital TV subscribers in Western Europe who had the ability to subscribe to Netflix.

The analysis points to Netflix aiming for better reach in other markets -- Central and South America, Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). These territories -- sans China -- amount to 400 million pay/digital TV subscriptions. Currently, Netflix has around 40 million subscribers in these markets.

One of Netflix’s fastest-growing markets of this group -- Asia-Pacific -- has climbed to be included in 15% of all pay/digital TV distributors, up from 5% in 2017.

Looking at other growing competitors, Bernstein Research estimates that Disney+ could have between 106 million and 138 million worldwide subscribers in five years.