Search icon

Entertainment

18th Jan 2019

Netflix say Fortnite is their biggest competitor, not other streaming services

Wil Jones

There is only so much screen time in a day

You get home from, after dragging yourself to the gym, and then order a Deliveroo because you are too tired to cook. So you fire up Netflix.

Or actually, do you want to play an hour of Fortnite? Concentrating on a show is too much effort when you could be playing with your mates.

Oh, such difficult choices. Such terrible first world problems.

You might not think of Netflix and Fortnite are direct competitors. But it turns out that Netflix themselves do.

In their 2018 earnings report, that was published on Thursday, Netflix stated that other streaming services like Amazon, Hulu, or HBO are not their main competition. Instead, they are most concerned about people playing video games instead of watching Stranger Things, and in particular a certain extremely popular online battle royale title.

“We earn consumer screen time, both mobile and television, away from a very broad set of competitiors,” said the report.

“We compete with (and lose to) Fortnite more than HBO.”

The report also stated that it gets ten per cent of television screen time in the US, and a bit less for mobile. They did not think they were losing out to other television options though, and instead to video games.

Netflix has nearly 139 million subscribers worldwide – in November 2018, Epic Games said Fortnite has over 200 million registered users (the game is, of course, free-to-play).