Report: Viewership of Netflix Original Series Drops Year by Year
The video content service Netflix is still the largest and most popular of its kind, but at least in the US market it seems that its dominance is no longer clear.
According to data from the market research company Nielsen, in terms of the most popular original series, Netflix fell from 80% of viewership in 2021 to 52% so far during 2025.
This is a clear trend that has continued consistently over the past few years, with an annual drop of 5-10% each year.
The rest of the market is gradually moving to competitors, but the names may be surprising.
So far during 2025, Amazon Video has shown the fastest growth and accounts for about 13% of popular content.
Apple Video also grew to 7% of popular content, after its presence in 2024 was almost zero.
Hulu also boasts 10% of popular content and Paramount Plus has 8%, at the expense of Netflix, of course.
Disney Plus, which for a time was Netflix’s most significant competitor at least in subscriber growth, is experiencing a drop similar to Netflix.
After reaching 8% in 2021, it now barely records 3% of viewership in original series.
It is important to emphasize that these data refer to viewership of new and original content, produced exclusively for the different video services during the year.
It does not reflect a similar drop in the number of subscribers, and it is possible that the change can be explained by the services themselves choosing to invest less in new exclusive content and increasing the acquisition of existing series and movies in the market.
However, this situation also indicates some risk for Netflix: if its content catalog is not perceived as high quality and exclusive as before, subscribers may disconnect temporarily and return only when a new and interesting series appears that they want to watch.
