Just 8 Percent of People Who Tried Quibi Reportedly Paid For a Subscription
We haven’t written too much about Quibi, the new mobile-centric streaming service, because ... well, so far, the programming we’ve seen from Quibi is a lot less interesting than the reporting about the inner-workings of Quibi — like the recent report from Vulture in which the company’s CEO responded to a question about her favorite TV shows with “I’m not sure I’d classify myself as an entertainment enthusiast.”
To be fair, some of Quibi’s struggles are a matter of terrible timing. The company launched a streaming service intended to be watched entirely by people on the go (all its content is short — its weird name is short for “quick bites”) a few weeks into a global pandemic that locked a vast percentage of the Earth’s population inside their homes. As recently as last month, Quibi was still working on functionality for Rokus and other streaming devices.
Quibi’s initial 90-day free trials are wrapping up, and the numbers of subscribers sticking around to continue paying for the app are, according to the “research firm Sensor Tower,” less than ideal. They report that “910,000 people [signed] up for free 90-day trials within the first three days of its April 6 launch” but “only 72,000 subscribers stuck around and decided to pay $5 a month (or $8 without ads) for the service.” That’s an 8 percent conversion rate. (For sake of comparison, Disney+ has something like 50 million users, and it only launched in November.)
For what it’s worth, Quibi disputed these numbers in a statement to Deadline:
The number of paid subscribers is incorrect by an order of magnitude. Our conversion from download to trial is above mobile app benchmarks, and we are seeing excellent conversion to paid subscribers – both among our 90-day free trial sign-ups from April, as well as our 14-day free trial sign-ups from May and June.
Quibi is still rolling out new shows, of course. On July 20, they’ll premiere Die Hart, a series starring Kevin Hart as himself, in which he plays “a fictionalized version of himself who’s tired of being the comedic sidekick. He gets his wish when a famous director offers him his dream – to be a leading man action star – but there’s a catch: Kevin must first train at the world’s greatest action star school, run by a lunatic.” Here is the trailer:
So, there you go. Quibi! It’s an app that exists.
Gallery — The Best TV Shows of 2020 So Far: