Netflix in Latin America – statistics & facts

A relative hegemony

The six major markets within the region are also the leading Latin American countries by video-on-demand (VoD) revenue: Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, and Peru. According to the latest available data, this also reflects the overall viewership of the top SVoD provider. In 2019, about 54 million people were watching Netflix in Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina – more than half of them in the Portuguese-speaking country. But a more recent projection, made after two key events for the industry in that region – the COVID-19 outbreak and the debut of Disney+ – indicates a long-lasting yet decreasing hegemony for the dominant player in this segment. In 2019, Netflix held more than three-fourths of all SVoD active paid accounts in Latin America. Its share is forecast to decline to less than half of the accounts by 2023 and to continue to trend down as Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and other platforms divide and conquer the market. Yet, the share of Amazon’s and Disney’s services altogether (35.5 percent) would still stand below Netflix’s (44.5 percent).

Challenges and potentials

The triumph of Netflix in Latin America came with burdens. Namely, pricing and competition for third-party content. Internet users surveyed in 2021 in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico cited cost and the lack of their favorite series and movies as their main reasons for canceling a VoD service. Pricing is particularly challenging in a region that historically struggles with the exchange rate. And featuring a variety of content within a single catalog becomes harder as producing companies launch their own streaming branches – including Globo in Brazil and Televisa in Mexico. This helps to explain why Netflix's average monthly revenue per paying subscription in Latin America decreased by nine percent in 2020, despite the increasing regional revenue that year. But this market still provides the company with the resources to invest in solutions for those obstacles. Throughout the first three quarters of 2021, Netflix's revenue in Latin America grew by over 10 percent compared to the same period of 2020.

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