Netflix pulled a Peacock move last week by getting into live sports - specifically, boxing, a sport not streamed by many.
And Netflix did it well, building up a lot of hype for the fight between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul that culminated in the match last weekend.
Did it work?
Yes, it certainly did!
Looking at Appfigures download estimates for Netflix this year we can see two things.
The first is that downloads, which were very stable before the weekend, jumped by a lot. The second is that a lot, in this case, is nearly three million new downloads. That's more than twice the number of new downloads OG streamer gets in a typical Friday - Sunday.
If you're thinking, "oh, just double??", think again because most apps don't even get close to a million downloads a day. Unless you're TikTok, but Netflix isn't.
Friday contributed to a little over 1M downloads, Saturday added 1.2M, and 630K came in on Sunday, according to our estimates. Subtracting the expected downloads, we’re left with 1.7M new users who came in for the fight, which Netflix can now monetize.
Most downloads, 23% of the 2.9M total, came from the US where Google Play was responsible for about twice as many downloads as the App Store. India came in second and was the only other country with a double-digit share (12%). Brazil, Indonesia, and Turkey round out the top 5, all with single-digit shares ranging between 9% and 5%.
Netflix is following Peacock's lead here with its entry into live sports, the new "hack" to grow in streaming. I expect to see more streamers do the same as we get into 2025.
December saw a curious split: downloads dropped 2% while revenue sat at $1.3B. ChatGPT and TikTok dominated both charts as the mobile industry enters a new maturity phase.
Wall Street bet $2 billion on Polymarket, and downloads surged 1,172% in December. The prediction market banned in 2022 is now where Wall Street looks for signals.