Netflix's Rise to the Top Among its Competitors During the Pandemic

By: Sophie Lizmi

Original content's impact on subscribers.

As the pandemic hit, many families cozied up to their couches to binge-watch their favorite series. With shows like Tiger King, Love Is Blind, and many more that came to the screens in March of 2020, Netflix’s ability to produce a high volume of TV shows in these last few months has led to its strength against competitors. ​

Netflix released a wrap-up of the year’s most binged shows, and what was reported is far from shocking. With shows such as Money Heist and Ragnarok, subscribers raised the international viewing of these shows. This helped these shows climb to the top of the “Top 10” feature of the website for many weeks in hundreds of countries. The reach that Netflix has to viewers all over the world has helped propel its earnings for the year to great heights. 

Netflix is unique in its viewer reach. With the help of many Netflix originals that were released this past year, these shows were able to make life in lockdown a little more bearable. With our eyes glued to our TVs watching the chronicles of Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin, or marveling at Beth Harmon’s chess skills, Netflix continues to set the bar incredibly high with its originals. There are shows of all types being brought to the streaming platform, which shows Netflix’s versatility. The company’s competitors such as Hulu and HBO Max trail far behind on their number of monthly subscribers and Netflix continues to make huge strides thanks to the help of their increase in new original content. With the help of the influx of all of the new Netflix originals, they have brought in a large amount of new subscribers since March, and this helped the already popular streaming service rise to the top against its competitors. 

Although Netflix transcends far beyond many of its competitors, Prime Video and Netflix are battling for the top spot in the streaming world. According to Reelgood, a site that follows the numbers behind how many moves and shows these streaming services provide, both Netflix and Prime Video provide the largest range of movies and shows to watch.  This is very clear to see, as Netflix has been around for the longest time out of these streaming services.  Netflix being one of the top streaming platforms, trails closely behind Prime Video and continues to soar.