Netflix signs up more than one in 10 British households

More than three million British households subscribe to Netflix - twice as many as a year ago - according to the latest estimates.

The new figure means more than one in 10 households have joined the film and television streaming service and signals an acceleration in take-up over the last 12 months. It places the company well ahead of its nearest direct rival, Amazon, particularly among young viewers who are believed to perceive an extra ‘cool’ factor around Netflix.

Based in Silicon Valley, Netflix does not disclose its progress in the UK. However, research by Enders Analysis, based on the biggest survey of the video on-demand market yet conducted, has found that it is more popular than previously thought.

^{UK market penetration by percentage of households that subscribe. Source: BARB}

The survey was conducted by BARB, the body that measures audiences for the television industry, on a sample of 13,500 households. It pegs Netflix’s UK subscriber base at 2.8 million in the first quarter of this year, hundreds of thousands more than had been estimated based on smaller surveys.

Toby Syfret, the author of the research, said: “Netflix has always been highly secretive and released very few details about its international streaming performance in individual countries beyond the general statement that it is seeing encouraging progress everywhere

“Not since Netflix’s announcement in August 2012 that its total subscriber base in the UK and Ireland had passed the one million mark, have we heard any numbers from the horse’s mouth.”

Netflix must by now be past the three million mark, he added, given several months have passed since the BARB survey and the company has continued to report strong growth in international markets.

It means around an extra 1.5 million households have joined Netflix in the last year, according to Enders Analysis. In the previous 12 months only an estimated 500,000 signed up.

The acceleration has come alongside a pair of television series hits that are exclusive to Netflix in the UK: Breaking Bad and the remake of House of Cards.

It has also been driven by a wholesale deal Netflix signed with Virgin Media in September, which has made easily available on the main television in 3.7 million households as part of a cable subscription. It is expected that the service will get another boost later in the year when it is made available on YouView set-top boxes provided by BT and TalkTalk, which are in more than a million living rooms.

The increasing popularity of Netflix could put pressure on BSkyB to follow suit. It is by far Britain’s biggest pay-TV provider, with 10.7 million customers across satellite and its own streaming service, Now TV, and has so far resisted allowing third party on-demand services onto its platform.

Amazon’s subscription streaming service is less than half as popular as Netflix, according to the new estimates, with only 1.2 million households. Its viewers tend to be older, BARB’s survey said.

Mr Syfret said: “Netflix has a notably higher take-up in ABC1 homes, and at the same time homes with three or more TV sets, HD reception and one or more 40-inch screens.”

“The biggest difference of all lies in the age of head of household profile, where Netflix has double the proportion of the 16-24s – clearly the extra ‘cool’ factor.”

The impact of a price rise in May from £6 to £7 per month Netflix’s growth rate will no revealed until the next BARB survey.