Netflix started operations in 1997, but didn't get into video streaming until 2007. Prior to that, the American company competed with DVD rental stores by mailing the movies to its customers. Netflix was therefore a mail-order DVD rental service, and you certainly know it: it still is.
DVD/Blu-Ray rental still profitable at Netflix in the USA
However, the company no longer highlights the results of this division in its quarterly financial reports, now considering itself as a streaming service in its own right. It will therefore have been necessary to read between the lines of the last report to learn that mail-order rental, an activity which has only ever been ensured in the United States, brought in a profit of $ 35 million to Netflix in the third quarter of 2022, leading to a total of 112 million for the first 9 months of the year.
DVD/Blu-Ray rental, business sector down in 2022
We are therefore off to a bad start this year to reach the 200 million that had been totaled for the whole of 2021 (same figure also in 2020 and 400 million in 2018), showing a clear decline in this activity, a reflection of the inexorable decline in this market. For comparison, this figure was 400 million in 2018.