The Netflix Library is Growing in Every Country but the United States

In 2015 we reported that the Netflix library in the United States has been cut by more than 50%, but the streaming service continues to grow steadily, with the stock almost doubling in that same time period.

Subscribers continue to grow, and more importantly, they also expanded from being in a few dozen countries to being in almost every country in the world. The initial reactions to this though were a bit lackluster, as the Netflix catalog in most countries was pretty soft, with many new subscribers complaining that when they were seeing the US library, their own selections seemed to pale in comparison.

But a report yesterday by Champion Traveler, a site that compares the best times to travel around the world, showed that the Netflix library around the world is growing rapidly. The numbers show that almost every country around the world has seen increases in their total title counts jump from anywhere between 25-350%, and several countries overtaking the US as the biggest library in the world.

Netflix has big ambitions to make their library as consistent as possible across all the different services. They don’t *want* this discrepancy, but contract negotiations for streaming rights in nearly every country in the world are complicated, with different owners in different regions all requiring their own contracts. Even some of the Netflix originals like ‘House of Cards’ aren’t always available in each country, because pre-expansion Netflix had sold the rights to third parties, and now struggle to regain them without a premium cost.

This explains the focus on less content but more originals. Think the HBO model here, with hundreds of titles stamped with the “Netflix Original” logo in the catalog. Each month, more and more originals are releasing, from new TV shows, original movies, and standup comedy specials.