Just under 19m people signed up to Netflix at the end of last year as a crackdown on password sharing and a raft of hit shows boosted business.
The US streaming giant said subscriber numbers reached 301.6m in the last three months of 2024, up from 282.7m in the third quarter.
It marked the biggest quarterly gain in subscribers in history, beating the 15.8m in early 2020 during the pandemic streaming boom.
The surge came as it cashed in on initiatives to clampdown on account sharing by forcing viewers to pay to watch its shows rather than using a borrowed password.
And a venture into live sports streaming paid off as the Jake Paul and Mike Tyson boxing fight was ‘the most-streamed sporting event ever’.
Live sports has been an expensive punt for Netflix, costing the company £123million to broadcast two American football games on Christmas Day. This is £41million more than the price of producing a season of Game of Thrones.
New subscribers: Viewers flocked to Netflix to watch new offerings such as Black Doves, starring Keira Knightley (pictured), No Good Deed and Man on the Inside
But the games – including the Houston Texans vs. Baltimore Ravens NFL game, at which Beyonce performed – were ‘the two most-streamed NFL games in history.’
Popular shows, including the latest seasons of dystopian thriller Squid Game and dating show Love is Blind, ‘outperformed even our high expectations’, the company said.
Viewers also flocked to watch new offerings such as Black Doves, starring Keira Knightley, No Good Deed and Man on the Inside.
The uplift in the number of paying customers was significantly higher than the 10m analysts had forecast.
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