We’re Watching Billions of Hours of Netflix
Companies around the world are losing vital business amid pandemic-related quarantining, social distancing, and shutdowns. Not Netflix, though!
The streaming behemoth has been a saving grace for consumers who can’t go to the movie theater and who are running out of linear TV to watch, and thus, Netflix viewership is way up. (It also doesn’t hurt that Netflix released a cultural phenomenon just as stay-at-home orders went into effect.)
But just how much Netflix are we watching? Kill the Cable Bill, an online cord-cutting resource, joined other outlets in reporting on Netflix’s huge quarantine surge. Here are some of the astounding statistics:
According to Kill the Cable Bill’s calculations, Netflix users are watching an average of about 3.2 hours of Netflix video per day on the streaming platform, compared to an average of 2 hours per day in 2019.
The outlet predicts that there are 63.7 million Netflix users in the United States, meaning Netflix users in the U.S. are watching a total of 203.8 million hours of Netflix per day of quarantine.
If so, that means users in the U.S. are watching a total of 6.1 billion hours of Netflix per month of quarantine. That’s nearly 700,000 years!
If half of all Netflix users are streaming Netflix in HD—as opposed to standard definition (SD) and ultra-high definition (UHD)—then Kill the Cable Bill estimates that the average Netflix user is using 9.8 gigabytes of data to stream Netflix per day of quarantine.
And if that’s the case, then Netflix users in the U.S. are using a total of 18.3 million terabytes of data per month of quarantine.
Tiger King, which premiered as quarantine practices began, reached 34.3 unique viewers within its first 10 days on Netflix, according to Nielsen. That beats the second season of Stranger Things.
Netflix added 15.8 million new subscribers worldwide in the first three months of 2020, marking its largest-ever single-quarter growth spurt, according to Vulture. That spike more than doubled the company’s growth forecast for the quarter.
Amid the surge in streaming viewership, Netflix stock rose to a record high of $426.75 in mid-April, beating the previous record, which was set in July 2018, per MarketWatch.
Scroll down to see an infographic of Kill the Cable Bill’s findings.
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