Netflix Beats HBO in Subscription Revenue

Shortly after HBO's parent company Time Warner had reported its second quarter results on Wednesday, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings turned to Facebook celebrating that his company's streaming subscription revenue had beaten HBO's subscription revenue for the first time (reported by Quartz). And he was right too: between April and June, Netflix made $1,146 million from streaming subscriptions while HBO made $1,141.

While Hasting's did acknowledge that HBO is still much more profitable and will likely "kick Netflix's ass at the Emmys", the fact that Netflix makes as much money of subscriptions as HBO, arguably the most famous pay-TV provider in the world, speaks for itself. The way people watch video content has changed and Netflix has contributed to those changes by making bold decisions at a time, when others hadn't realized what was coming. Netflix now looks like the clear front runner in the new age of content delivery, and Hasting's decision to go all-in on streaming early in the game could prove golden in the end.