Netflix lost a million subscribers in Spain in the first quarter of 2023, according to data from analytics company Kantar. It was chanted that the removal of free shared accounts would penalize streaming leaders.

Shared Netflix accounts were a big demand to subscribe to the service at the time because of the known benefits. You have subscribed to Netflix and you can share your account for free with their son or cousin, whether they lived in your home or away from it. Or you got together with a group of friends, arranged a bill and paid for it together, making access much cheaper.

At the beginning of the year, Netflix announced the end of shared accounts as it grew to 100 million households, which the company said “It undermined our long-term ability to invest and improve as well as build our business”.

But Netflix’s strategy will not be free and everyone knew they would lose customers, although perhaps not as many as the million that Kantar says in Spain and for less than a quarter. It should be said that subscribers can still share their account, but now with a surcharge. The company accurately expects that lost subscribers will appreciate the content over time and return to the platform.

To claim that Netflix leads the world in streaming services for movies and series, but it stopped growing and other competitors such as Disney, the second largest subscriber base, and Prime Video, backed by a giant like Amazon, continue to push. And there are new services like SkyShowtime, which entered the Spanish market with force, attracting one in three new subscribers in the quarter, according to Kantar data.

We will see how the market develops during the year. The end of shared Netflix accounts was a blow, but the problem is more general. We have discussed this in other articles. Consumers don’t have the money to pay for a huge array of subscription services. And it’s not just series and movies. Add music; video game; cloud storage; edition; productivity… You have to choose and a lot so that you don’t stay in an ever smaller budget.