Netflix has lost billions of pounds off its value after losing the rights to key shows, a new report has revealed.
The streaming service’s shares have fallen by 11.4%, as This Is Money reports, with their 151.6 million paying customers at the end of the second quarter of 2019 around 2 million short of its forecast.
Investors have reportedly been put off by the revelation that Netflix has lost customers in the US for the first time since 2011, with their subscriber number dropping by 126,000.
The fall in shares and subscriber numbers is down, at least in part, to the loss of key shows such as Friends and The Office from the streaming service. Netflix recently paid £80m to keep ‘Friends’ on the service until the end of the year.
There have been some success stories from Netflix this year, though. David Attenborough’s new show Our Planet was watched by 33 million households in just four weeks.
The third season of Stranger Things, meanwhile, was watched by 40 million households in its first four days, with 18 million of those having watched the entire eight-episode series in that time.
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Netflix recently vowed to cut down the amount of scenes in its original shows that depict smoking. One of the worst offenders was Season 2 of Stranger Things, which saw a 44% increase in smoking depictions from the first series, climbing from 182 instances in season 1 to 262.