When Apple announced the launch of Apple TV Plus in March 2019, one of those rumors that seemed a bit exorbitant a few months earlier came true.
With a reference fund bet, headed by names like Steven Spielberg (who had not too favorable opinions towards streaming until then), JJ Abrams, Ron Howard, or M. Night Shyamalan, Apple seemed from the beginning to position itself as a platform where quality was going to prevail over quantity. They also had no other choice, given their very meager starter catalog compared to Netflix or Disney Plus.
But it was not just those big names that have worked the most for Apple, but the character of a football coach who has served as an entry point in the awards so that now, when the Apple service has launched the first chapters of his most ambitious bet to date –Foundation–, and you are just a few months away from your second birthday, you are going through your prime.
The first installments of the adaptation of the Asimov saga have received mostly very positive reviews, something to which the success of Ted lasso at the public level and also for awards. Apple TV Plus was together with Netflix the big name of the last Emmy Awards, achieving 11 awards out of 35 nominations and taking its star comedy 7 awards under its arm, a record for a comedy series that has just premiered its second season.
The series that follows in the footsteps of an American football coach who ends up managing a football team in England without much concert took home the awards for Best Comedy Series, Best Leading Actor in a Comedy Series (Jason Sudeikis), Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series (Brett Goldstein) and Best Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series (Hannah Waddingham).
There are a couple of important milestones here: Apple TV Plus is the first streaming service to achieve an Emmy in just two years of history and Ted lasso it is the first comedy to win the award in its category born directly on a platform.
Apple TV Plus: 20 million paying subscribers after gifting it to everything the world
However, although things now seem to be going from strength to strength for the Cupertino company with its service, the doubts were not unfounded. Apple started by offering a full year of access to the platform free for those who will buy an iPhone, a Mac or a product of a certain price range of your brand.
This July, Apple ended these massive free trials and shortened the period to three months. After that, Apple TV Plus costs $ 4.99 a month in the United States and the same amount in euros in Spain.
For this reason, in front of the more than 200 million Netflix subscribers, there has always been a question about how many users (and especially paying users, Apple TV Plus had). A few months ago, a report from The Information by internal sources they spoke of 40 million users of which 20 million were paid. More recently, and in the midst of the secrecy of numbers that surrounds all the streaming wars, Manzana recognized to a Canadian union that had 20 million subscribers between the United States and Canada.
Without the need to chase Netflix
Are they many or few? They are few compared to the big names, but a figure that can be relatively acceptable if compared, for example, with the 70 million users that HBO Max had in July in the United States. And most importantly, within the industry, Not even Disney has as much economic lung as the world’s most valuable company has.
Apple, unlike Netflix, does not have its main product on the platform even if it wants to. Neither did Disney despite its growing weight. In fact, if at an economic level we had to look for a comparison, Apple TV Plus is much more like Prime Video than any other platform in its business fit.
From an economic point of view, as we say, nobody can spend more than Apple, although the heads of their studies, Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg, have not wasted money lightly. So far, the annual content budget for Apple TV Plus has been around $ 6.5 billion. A paltry amount compared to Netflix ($ 17 billion) and behind Amazon Prime Video ($ 9 billion), which surpassed Apple in 2021.
In other words, Apple’s service gives losses and has a backup to continue doing so while investing in future productionis that they aim to have a great impact as it seems they will be after Foundation, Invasion, his series on alien invasions, and the science-fiction film with Tom Hanks Finch.
What role does Apple TV Plus occupy within Apple?
Thanks to this, patience seems to be Apple’s favorite virtue and it is reflected in their careful selection in content development. Your library is built entirely from originals, without any pre-existing catalog programming.
This strategy seems to be working when it comes to gaining impact at least. According to the analysis company Parrot Analytics, Apple TV Plus has seen audience demand for its original series grow, globally, along with platforms such as HBO Max and Disney Plus. Ted lasso is his flagship series, but The Morning Show is also working according to their analysis (combining interest in searches and with different patterns), in addition to other series such as See with Jason Momoa or For All Mankind.
Apple’s strategy is often compared to HBO’s in its original cable format. Few series, but cared for until marking its own stamp. The question is perhaps not if it will be right, but how much money Apple is willing to burn on its service until it becomes profitable on its own. For now, he doesn’t seem to be in a rush.