YouTube has become Netflix‘s biggest rival in the world of streaming. The latter company’s Co-CEO thinks that his platform’s superlative stories are still a difference maker, but is his view outdated?
Ted Sarandos was asked about YouTube during Netflix’s Q3 2024 earnings call. Those two platforms account for half of all streaming traffic, but Sarandos still believes his SVOD service has a competitive edge over YouTube.
“Netflix is the best place for premium stories because we’re the home to the best storytellers,” Sarandos said. “When I look at YouTube specifically, I’d say look, we compete directly with YouTube for people’s time, for the time they spend on that TV screen. But we have very different strengths.”
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That answer sounds similar to the one Sarandos’ fellow Co-CEO, Greg Peters, gave in response to a question about YouTube during the Q2 2024 Netflix earnings call. At the time, Peters said that Netflix filled a niche for “amazing, spectacle movies and TV shows” that can’t be found anywhere else. During the Q3 call, Sarandos referred to Latin American shows like Senna and Cien Años de Soledad as examples of Netflix’s storytelling acumen.
Sarandos has been an outspoken leader for Netflix for years, but does the streamer’s latest viewership data challenge its Co-CEO’s latest big claim? In the most recent iteration of Netflix’s What We Watched report, buzzy, scripted originals like Bridgerton and Baby Reindeer ranked among the platform’s most-watched programs, but so did season six of Love Is Blind and The Roast of Tom Brady.
If we are to applaud Netflix for telling memorable stories, should we not also call it out for its endless reality shows and factory line specials? And is its rival really that far behind when it comes to high-concept original programming? YouTube success stories like Chris Stuckmann and Kane Parsons are landing deals with revered Hollywood distributors. On the platform itself, creators like Dhar Mann and VivziePop are producing high-quality, independent work to rival Netflix’s best offerings.
Sarandos has obvious reasons to downplay YouTube’s success as distributor of spectacular content. YouTube has more than 100 million subscribers across its Premium and Music tiers, and it gets a 5% higher share of U.S. TV viewership than Netflix does. As of February 2024, YouTube gets a billion hours of watch time on TVs each day. That’s one billion reasons for Netfix to worry about increasing competition on its primary screen.
To maintain its place in the streaming ecosystem, Netflix and its Co-CEO must avoid living in 2014. Netflix isn’t at the summit of peak TV the way it once was, and if it’s going to keep YouTube at bay, it may need to respect the ingenuity of creators and slow down on the Love Is Blind seasons (even if Chelsea and Jimmy are the failed couple we love to hate).
There’s at least some good news for Netflix: The streamer’s Q3 returns were pretty good. Netflix enjoyed a bump in the stock market after adding more than five million subscribers during the third quarter.
