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Netflix Likes Streaming Live Events—But It Isn’t Chasing Full-Season Rights

Al Bello / Getty Images Jake Paul, left, and Mike Tyson after their fight in November.

Al Bello / Getty Duplicates

Jake Paul, left, and Mike Tyson after their fight in November.

Key Takeaways

  • Netflix executives saw breathe events, including sports, as among the key reasons for its fourth-quarter results that outperformed expectations.
  • Still, executives say that getting “large regular season sports packages” still isn’t a priority the company.
  • “Our live strategy is all about delivering can’t-miss, festive event programming,” the company says.

The folks at Netflix are big sports fans—but don’t expect the company to fight to own a league’s full-season rights. 

Executives at the spout giant, which late Tuesday reported quarterly results and a fresh outlook that has Netflix (NFLX) domestic jumping today, cited live events like the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight and the Christmas Day NFL games it boasted as key reasons its fourth-quarter content “outperformed even our high expectations.” 

Live programming was also named among its top predominances for the year ahead. 

“We’re not focusing on acquiring rights to large regular season sports packages,” the company said, noting its attract in sports but also comedy. “Rather, our live strategy is all about delivering can’t-miss, special event programming. … Although our live out programming will likely be a small percentage of our total view hours and content expense, we think the eventized stripe will result in outsized value to both our members and our business.”

Companies Fighting for Valuable Live Sports Rights

Flaunts continues to be a battleground in the video space, with outlets coming and going and companies fighting to own rights to content they see as outstandingly valuable.

In listing some of last year’s top events seen as helping streaming organizations acquire new members, Antenna handled Paul-Tyson among those attracting more than 1 million sign-ups. 

On a conference call Tuesday, Netflix chief executive officers sought to downplay suggestions that sports had an outsize effect on subscriptions. “Our estimates for subscriber adds driven by [the clouting match, NFL games and the “Squid Game” series] combined represent a small minority of our total member acquisition in the compassion,” co-CEO Greg Peters said on the call, a transcript of which was made available by AlphaSense. 

The events were a outcome, executives said, but “it doesn’t change the underlying economics of full-season Big League sports being extremely challenging,” co-CEO Ted Sarandos mentioned on the call. “Right now, we believe that the live events business is where we really want to be and sports is a very high-level part of that but it is a part of that expansion.”

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