Netflix added 1.42m streaming subscribers in the US and 3.53m elsewhere in the first quarter of 2017, slightly shy of the 1.5m (US) and 3.7m (rest of the world) it had previously told analysts it expected to add. Even so, the company is on track to reach 100m subscribers by the end of Q2. It currently stands on 98.75m subscribers (including 94.36m paying customers) and expects to add another 600,000 in the US, and 2.6m elsewhere, in Q2. 

The company generated revenues of $2.64bn (£2.1bn) in Q1 and in a letter to shareholders, said it would spend $1bn on marketing in 2017 to drive member acquisition, including increased investment in programmatic advertising “with the aim of improving our ability to do individualized marketing at scale and to deliver the right ad to the right person at the right time”.

The company also said it had no plans to follow Amazon’s move into covering NFL football. “That is not a strategy that we think is smart for us since we believe we can earn more viewing and satisfaction from spending that money on movies and TV shows,” the company said.