Streaming war in Brazil: Globoplay challenges Netflix for market leadership

The dispute in the Brazilian streaming market is growing. New figures reveal the size of the competition, which involves global giants and national players.

Globoplay surpassed Amazon Prime Video in audience in January 2023 but continues to lag behind leader Netflix, according to data from Kantar Ibope Media.

But in total users (including paid or unpaid subscribers), it would already be the largest in the market, according to industry sources.

The January data are part of the Cross Platform View (CPV), which measures the audience of the so-called linear TV (broadcast TV and pay TV), video on demand (VOD), and streaming in Brazil.

Despite Globoplay’s growth, pioneer Netflix maintains its leadership in audience share on video-on-demand platforms, with 4.8% of the total in January.

Globoplay achieved 0.7% of the audience, while Amazon Prime Video and other video-on-demand platforms had 0.5% each.

Kantar Ibope Media’s numbers reveal that streaming platforms count for only 6.5% of the audience, against 84.8% of the so-called Linear TV (73% of open TV and 11.8% of Pay TV).

On the other hand, YouTube, which belongs to Google, and Kantar considers a video-sharing platform, got 8.7% of the January audience in Brazil.

However, data from the independent platform FlixPatrol, which compiles the number of subscribers of streaming platforms worldwide, point out that Globoplay would be the platform with more users in Brazil, surpassing the American giants Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney Plus.

To Bloomberg Línea, FlixPatrol said it uses data from different sources and that its estimate of subscribers for Globoplay comes from a story on the American website Deadline, which says Globo itself would have reported the number in an event for the market in 2021.

According to Deadline, Globo would have said it had 101.6 million users across all its digital products and a 30 million user base for its subscription and ad-banked service on Globoplay.

That would be almost double the number of Netflix subscribers in Brazil, which has 15.3 million, still according to FlixPatrol.

In its latest quarterly report, Netflix said it had 41.7 million Latin American users, but without opening up the data by country.

For Matteo Ceurvels, senior analyst for Latin America and Spain at Insider Intelligence’s eMarketer, the numbers reported by FlixPatrol appear to be “quite atypical” since, in a survey by eMarketer in partnership with Livepanel and other local third-party sources such as Mobile Time and Opinion Box, Netflix appeared as the top streaming platform in Brazil.

“As much as Globoplay has tried to increase its market share, it has failed to compete with global heavyweights like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney Plus.”

“Part of this may be due to the quality of the streaming experience, the content available for streaming, and consumers’ growing preference for local and foreign-language content,” Ceurvels said in response to Bloomberg Línea.

eMarketer has separate numbers from FlixPatrol and projects that Netflix will have an increasingly high audience share of 82.1% among users of the subscription video service in Brazil this year, in a calculation that also considers users overall, not just subscribers.

“Despite increased competition, we expect Brazil to remain an important market for Netflix, growing 7.6% this year. This will make the country the third fastest growing audience market in the world, behind Japan (11.1%) and India (8.8%), among the 14 markets we project.”

In Livepanel’s survey of streaming service subscriber behavior via mobile devices, 72.8% of respondents said they would subscribe to Netflix by November 2022, compared to 33.7% for Amazon Prime Video, 21.7% for Disney Plus, and 20.7% for Globoplay.

Unlike other streaming services, Globoplay has several categories of subscribers, and many are unique users since the company bets on free delivery of part of the content for logged-in users (which plays TV Globo programming, on-demand journalistic, and others).

The reality show Big Brother Brasil is also an important aggregator of subscribers for the platform.

Globoplay aggregates its own content with that of independent producers, journalism, sports, and entertainment from Globo Studios and partnerships with distributors.

A Globoplay subscription also gives access to the catalog of soap operas, series, movies, documentaries, reality shows, and channel subscriptions.

Globoplay charges R$19.90 (US$3.88) per month, and the package that includes live channels from the Globo group costs R$42.90 (US$8.36).

In Brazil, Netflix has plans starting at R$18.90 (US$3.68), and Amazon Prime Video costs R$14.90 (US$2.90) monthly.

Bloomberg Línea contacted Globoplay and Amazon Prime Video but did not get a return on the platforms’ subscriber numbers.

Netflix said it does not disclose its subscriber base in Brazil.

Globoplay was created in 2015 to be a platform to stream content that aired on TV.

In the following years, Globo decided to produce and add original content to the platform.

According to the most recent data, the subscriber base grew by 374% in 2021 compared to the first quarter of 2019.

In 2021, Globo and Google closed a seven-year partnership to migrate all data centers and transfer content and products from Globoplay, G1, GE.com, and Gshow to Google Cloud, decommissioning Globo’s data center.

The partnership’s first project was the integration of Globoplay with Android TV to combine broadcast TV programming (with digital signal transmission) and internet TV.

With information from Bloomberg