The image is by Alex Castro.
The latest subscriber figures from AT&T make it seem like the service is doing well. AT&T revealed in a regulatory filing this week that it beat its projected year-end goal with 73.8 million total subscribers between the two. It's not too bad, right?
It is still tens of millions of subscribers behind rivals like Disney Plus and Netflix, despite the win after a year of highly anticipated movie debuts. The numbers come with some big problems. Hold the applause.
Variety reported that AT&T's figures don't distinguish how many subscribers each service has individually. The figures for each service will be revealed in AT&T's earnings in a couple weeks, but no figures are given for each service.
It should have been the year of Max.
The high-profile content slate it served over the last year, including titles like Dune, The Matrix Resurrections, and the third season of Succession, makes AT&T's growth less impressive. It should have helped boost its subscribers substantially when it launched internationally and added a lower-priced tier.
Disney Plus added more subscribers than any other company. Disney's streaming service had 118.1 million paid subscribers as of October 2021, up from 73.7 million a year earlier. At the end of 2020, there were 61 million subscribers globally, but at the end of this year, there are 73.8 million.
Streaming data is almost impossible to compare on a single level because everyone is playing by different rules. Features like auto-play and piracy can greatly skew a true picture of subscriber and title success.
Last year should have been the year that Max won. Without the help of a day-and-date slate, it will have to find new ways to grow.
