The streaming pioneer made a big push into live sporting events in the fourth quarter, with the boxing match between Tyson and Paul attracting 65m streams worldwide.
On Christmas Day it streamed a pair of National Football League games, one of which featured Beyoncé as a halftime performer, that reached an average of 24m viewers each.
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The success of the live sporting events has intensified speculation that Netflix could enter a bigger sports rights deal with a league.
Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive, said sports rights deals were too expensive — but appeared to leave the door open for discussion.
“We’re thrilled with everything about” the NFL games on Netflix in December, he said.
“But it doesn’t really change the underlying economics of full-season big league sports being extremely challenging. If there was a path where we could actually make the economics work for both us and the league, we certainly would explore.”
Netflix also debuted the second season of Squid Game, which had reached a record-breaking 68m views in its first week.
“We enter 2025 with strong momentum, coming off a year with record net (subscriber) additions and having re-accelerated growth,” the company wrote in a letter to shareholders.
It added that while the business remained “intensely competitive”, it did not have the “distractions” of having to manage the decline of television networks that its rivals at the traditional Hollywood studios were coping with.
Revenue was US$10.2b ($18.01b) in the fourth quarter, and the company raised its revenue guidance for this year by $500m ($883m) , up as much as 14 per cent from 2024. Earnings per share more than doubled to US$4.27 ($7.54) from US$2.11 ($3.73) a year ago, and operating income surpassed $2bn ($3.54b), up 52 per cent.
This is the last time Netflix will report quarterly subscriber figures, which have been closely watched by investors for years. But it said it would continue to release the numbers “as we cross key milestones”.
Its subscriber base has surged since launching a crackdown on password sharing in May 2023, which pushed the shares up more than 80 per cent in 2024. But the stock has had a bumpy start in 2025.
Wall Street has been bracing for subscription growth to slow as the initial boost from the initiative wanes.
But Netflix is making a big bet on live events to draw in new subscribers, and this month it debuted its weekly streams of WWE Raw — part of a 10-year deal with the wrestling entertainment group. Sarandos said the first week of WWE on Netflix drew about 5m viewers.
Executives have said the live events will help deliver audiences that advertisers crave. The ads business had a choppy start after its introduction in the autumn of 2022, given weakness in the sector.
But Greg Peters, co-CEO, said advertising revenue doubled last year and he was expecting it to double again in 2025. “We’re making solid progress” in advertising, he said.
“You can say that 2025 is the year that we transition from a crawl to a walk.”
Written by: Christopher Grimes in Los Angeles
© Financial Times
