Netflix has beaten all its competitors in raw subscription numbers three times over, despite arriving in the market late without local business partners.

But the numbers, which point to over a million Australians aged over 14 signing up to the streaming video service, could be deceptive.

A Roy Morgan survey of 2088 Australians said “up to half” of the subscribers to Stan, Presto and Quikflix also subscribed to Netflix, Tim Martin, general manager of media for Roy Morgan said.

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And he said about 300,000 Foxtel subscribers also subscribe to Netflix.

“Were they holding on to Foxtel until Game of Thrones wrapped up?” Mr Martin asked.

The evidence of multiple subscriptions could follow introductory offers from the streaming services that gave users a month of free access.

“As each has different content available, many Australian TV lovers may choose to subscribe to multiple SVOD providers,” he said.

According to the data, one million Australians had signed up to Netflix in May, a rise from the 766,000 that had signed up in April.

Presto had 97,000 subscribers in May making them second highest, while Stan had 91,000 and Foxtel Play had 40,000 subscribers.

But Quickflix, which has been in the market the longest as a publicly listed stand-alone operator disputed the Roy Morgan statistics.

According to company, as of March 2015 they had 123,000 paid subscribers, of which founder Stephen Langsford said two-thirds were streaming. Quickflix’s own assessment would place them second in the field.

“We have no doubt interest in streaming is growing but to extrapolate a million-plus subscribers to Netflix based on a survey of 2000 doesn’t hold up,” he said.

Roy Morgan’s polling numbers suggest Quickflix had 43,000 subscribers.

Netflix clearly has a good head start on its competition. Source: Roy Morgan