Netflix expects to spend in the neighborhood of $18 billion in cash on content in 2025 — and it sees plenty of runway to expand in the years ahead, according to Netflix CFO Spencer Neumann.
“We’re not anywhere near a ceiling” with respect to content spending, said Neumann, speaking Wednesday at the 2025 Morgan Stanley Tech, Media & Telecom Conference. “I think we are still just getting started.” The $18 billion pegged for this year would be up around 11% from its 2024 cash content spending of $16.2 billion.
Asked about how Netflix forecasts content spending, Neumann said “it’s a little art and science.” It starts with anticipated revenue, which the company has “pretty good predictability about,” he said, and then it looks at content spending in the context of achieving margin targets.
Netflix ended 2024 with 301.6 million paid members globally, accelerating its growth from 2023. That translates into over 700 million people who are watching Netflix content, Neumann said. However, “we’re still small on every key measure” in the context of the entertainment business. Netflix is in about 40% of connected TV households around the world and has captured 6% of its addressable market, the CFO said. And, in the U.S. and other countries, Netflix as a portion of total TV viewing is still less than 10%.
“We see the opportunity to grow everywhere,” Neumann said. “It’s more about, where is the biggest opportunity to grow and spend… We want to stay in growth mode versus maintenance mode as long as possible.”
Netflix’s objective is to deliver “more and more entertainment value per dollar,” he said. It’s also focused on continuing to improve the overall experience “because the competition is improving as well,” Neumann said.
Netflix programs to a broad and diverse global audience, with a slate that includes TV shows and movies across multiple genres and formats, produced in more than 50 countries. He noted that in 2025, Netflix has three of its biggest-ever scripted English-language series — its “most mature” category of content — returning: “Squid Game,” “Wednesday” and “Stranger Things.” Neumann said Netflix’s licensed content spending is also growing and that live events is a growth category that “we’re just starting to build out.”
Chief content officer Bela Bajaria has created a global studio operation, Neumann said. The most important thing for productions outside the U.S. is that they “have to start with big, local impact” with “authentic storytelling.” Then, “if those stories are great they can occasionally travel” outside those markets, as Korean drama “Squid Game” did.
YouTube has been grabbing a greater share than Netflix of viewing on TVs. But Neumann said, while they do compete for consumer attention, it’s “not a zero-sum game.” He said Netflix is most focused on taking share of entertainment time that “neither of us are capturing” — i.e., traditional TV. In addition, Netflix differs from YouTube because “we share in the creative and economic risk with our creators… We think we’re the home for the best creators and storytellers on the planet.”
As for how big Netflix’s appetite is for live sports, Neumann said the company wants to remain in “those big, eventized moments,” like the pair of NFL games on Christmas Day and the WWE, which started earlier this year. “We loved the NFL on Christmas Day, Beyonce Bowl, it worked,” he said. Whether Netflix would be interested in, say, taking an NFL Sunday afternoon package, Neumann responded, “never say never on these things” but that “it’s not on our near horizon.”
For the fourth quarter of 2024, Netflix reported 18.9 million net new global subscribers, around double analyst expectations. For the full year, Netflix added more than 41 million subscribers, significantly up from 29.5 million in 2023.
Netflix also raised its 2025 outlook for revenue to be between $43.5 billion and $44.5 billion (up $500 million from previous guidance) and for operating margin to be 29%, up one percentage point from the prior forecast.
Meanwhile, in January 2025, Netflix announced price hikes in the U.S. and other markets across all plans — a flex by the subscription streamer demonstrating its pricing power. The Standard ad-free plan in the U.S. rose by $2.50, going from $15.49 to $17.99 per month, the first time in three years since Netflix raised the price of that tier. Netflix implemented the first increase for the ad-supported tier, which is now $7.99 per month in the U.S., up $1 from $6.99.
Netflix customers worldwide streamed more than 94 billion hours of content in the second half of 2024, up 5% year over year, according to the company. “Squid Game” Season 2 was Netflix’s most-viewed series over that time period with nearly 87 million views. But no single title accounted for more than 1% of total viewing on Netflix: For example, “Squid Game 2” represented only 0.7% of time spent viewing in the back half of the year.
