Netflix has seen the number of new subscribers in Europe drop by over 1.5 million in the second quarter of 2021.
According to the company’s Q2 figures, just 188,000 new subscriptions were taken out across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, that’s down from 1.8 million in Q1.
In total, the streamer now has 68.7 million subscribers across the region.
Globally, Netflix added 1.54 million global subscribers in the period to reach more than 209 million.
“The pandemic has created unusual choppiness in our growth and distorts year-over-year comparisons as acquisition and engagement per member household spiked in the early months of Covid,” the company wrote in its quarterly letter to shareholders.
Netflix also said it is not currently planning any M&A activity. “While we are continually evaluating opportunities, we don’t view any assets as ‘must-have’ and we haven’t yet found any large scale ones to be sufficiently compelling to act upon,” wrote Netflix’s founder and co-CEO Reed Hastings.
Meanwhile, co-CEO Ted Sarandos said Netflix is not looking to move into sports like some of its competitors. “Our fundamental product is on-demand and ad-free, and sports tends to be live and packed with advertising,” he said during a call to discuss the quarter’s results. “What is the best use of about $10 billion? I think that’s what it’s going to cost to invest meaningfully in big-league sports.”
