Gyms get you by making memberships cheap and easy, and cancellations incredibly difficult.
The flip side of that is that only a small fraction of their members could actively use their memberships or they wouldn't have enough space. The active members get their membership effectively subsidized by people who don't use their memberships.
Apparently up to 50% of a gym's sign-ups happen in the month of January due to new years resolutions, and January/February are the busiest months as a result, though the majority keep their membership even after their resolve to go tapers off.
Gym memberships are also a thing people think they should have more than they actually desire to use them. So many people want to be healthy and get in shape, but aren't committed to actually doing the work. So when it comes time to think about cancelling plenty of people keep the gym membership because they think theyshould use it but then don't make the time.
Whereas Netflix and other streaming? It's so easy to just stay in and binge watch. The logical thing to do is cancel when you aren't using it to avoid paying year round, but they bank on the combination of laziness (takes effort to cancel) and ease of use - if you watch even just once or twice a month it starts seeming worthwhile.
And I'd bet most users still make them money. There's a huge fixed cost to setting up a giant content streaming service like Netflix, and to acquiring their content catalog, but they've hyper optimized the distribution so I'd expect all but the heaviest users make them money. And with ad supported plans, watching more would mean they get to serve more ads and make even more money.
In Europe it's law to make cancellations as easy as signing up. Also using the same methods; so if you can sign up through the web it's not allowed to only offer cancellation by registered mail that must arrive on a full moon only.
The flip side of that is that only a small fraction of their members could actively use their memberships or they wouldn't have enough space. The active members get their membership effectively subsidized by people who don't use their memberships.
Apparently up to 50% of a gym's sign-ups happen in the month of January due to new years resolutions, and January/February are the busiest months as a result, though the majority keep their membership even after their resolve to go tapers off.