Windfall for Netflix? Surcharge for account sharing is said to bring $1.6 billion into the coffers

• Netflix is ​​testing charging an extra fee for users outside of a household.
• This would possibly generate an additional 1.6 billion US dollars in sales.
• However, there is also resistance to the Netflix plans online, which contradict previous statements by the streaming service.

A week ago you could read from us that the streaming giant Netflix is ​​testing an innovation. In 3 American countries, there is an extra charge for sharing passwords outside of a household. In the test phase in Costa Rica, Peru and Chile, this amounts to around 2-3 US dollars per additional person in the Netflix account. After the said test phase, an international expansion appears to be within the realm of possibility.

Netflix could take in the whopping $1.6 billion in addition

A new Wall Street analysis has now done the math and comes to the conclusion that Netflix the proud sum of 1.6 billion US dollars with the tougher, paid crackdown on password sharing. That would be a whopping 4 percent premium to 2023 forecast sales of $38.8 billion (via Variety).

Furthermore, the analysts at Cowen & Co. assume that half of the people who have not previously paid will become paid members as a result of the surcharge on the subscription – and half of this half will simply get their own Netflix account increases.

However, there are also much less optimistic estimates and analyses, as Variety also reports. So it should also be considered that Netflix would cannibalize the regular growth of the streaming service (i.e. the addition of new Netflix accounts) with the tougher crackdown on account sharing.

Higher prices meet with incomprehension online

As is so often the case in such cases, there is also online criticism of the Netflix plans that became known last week. For example, old statements are circulating from Netflix boss Reed Hastings, who in 2016 said

An old, official Netflix tweet from 2017 is also doing the rounds on Twitter, which says: “Love is sharing a password.”

In times of escalating competition in the streaming market, and in view of new, strong competitors such as Disney+ and HBO Max, Netflix can unfortunately no longer afford such goodwill in the future.

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