Earlier this year, the revelation came that former Netflix co-CEO and co-founder Reed Hastings donated $7 million dollars of his own money to support Kamala Harris’ bid for the White House. The news sparked an immediate backlash on social media, with the hashtag #CancelNetflix trending for more than 24 hours. Now, two months later, we have our first look at how Hastings’ political contribution affected the streaming juggernauts’ bottom line.
According to a new report from IndieWire, data collected from Antenna shows that Netflix’s average daily cancellations increased 2.7x for the period of July 25–29 when compared to the previous two weeks, with the 26th providing the largest number of users saying adios to the platform in the past year. Things returned to normal for Netflix by the end of the month, but it’s clear that some damage had been done when you take into consideration that June averaged 1.8% in cancellations and August averaged 2.0%. By the time the dust had settled, July’s number was slightly higher, sitting at 2.8%.
Though Hastings stepped aside as Netflix’s co-CEO in January to make room for Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, that didn’t seem to phase right-leaning subscribers who were incensed by his post on X which came out in support of Harris. While he didn’t say anything particularly controversial when it was revealed that she’d taken the baton from Joe Biden to finish the race to the White House, apparently his words of congratulations were enough to trigger many of Donald Trump’s base, leading to the jump in cancellations at Netflix.
No, This Isn’t the End of Netflix
Founded in 1997 by Hastings and Marc Randolph, Netflix started off both selling and renting DVDs by mail, with Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice being the first ever movie the company sent out. After a year, it was obvious that the bulk of their revenue was generated from rentals, so that’s where the focus was placed going forward. 10 years later, its billionth DVD was sent out (the 2006 film Babel), and the company entered the realm of streaming, offering a measly 1,000 titles at the time it launched its video on demand service. Since then, the company has grown exponentially, and now develops its own content which includes movies, TV shows, and games. Their last DVD rental, 2010s True Grit, was sent out in 2023.
While many will see the report from Antenna and surmise that the jump in membership cancellations spells the end for Netflix, nothing could be further from the truth. The company still has more than 277 million active subscribers around the globe, and generates almost $10 billion dollars in revenue each quarter, with $2 billion of that being profit. At the time of this writing, their stock price sits at a healthy $709.27 a share, with its all-time high closing price being $722.26, which it managed to hit on September 24 of this year, long after Hastings’ contribution to the Harris campaign was made public knowledge.
Netflix is expected to announce its third-quarter earnings on October 17 for the period of July through September, and while it will be interesting to see how the #CancelNetflix trend affected their performance, we don’t expect any big surprises from the streaming giant, whose reports of their death have been greatly exaggerated.