Netflix vice president Ted Sarandos returned to the sidelines of the UBS Global TMT Conference on the firm’s new strategy to win back subscribers. The service has just had a tough 2022 to say the least – and has already announced sweeping measures, including the launch of a cheaper ad-supported subscription.
But a statement from Ted Sarandos about sports streaming particularly caught the eye: “we are not anti-sports, but simply for the profits. We still have to figure out how to offer [du sport en streaming]. But I am confident that we can double in size without sport”explains the manager.
Netflix will not offer sports streaming at this time
For now, only Prime Video offers sports streaming. The platform began to position itself on the subject in April 2017 with the first acquisition of rights in the United States. American football, tennis, then more recently football with the acquisition of Ligue 1 rights… the sports offer on the Amazon platform probably attracts customers on Prime Video, although the precise figures are not known.
However, it should be noted that buying rights is very expensive, and that in the absence of precise figures it is difficult to say whether the strategy is really profitable or not for the company. To give an order of magnitude, figures taken from Statista evoke a 2022 tariff of 3.5 billion euros for the rights of the Premier League or even more than 2 billion euros for the rights of La Liga.
Proposing a sports offer is therefore a risky bet, and requires a strategy that Netflix has yet to define. For the time being Netflix seems to think in any case that buying rights risks being too expensive, for ultimately little results on the progression of the subscriber base. We note in passing that for the moment, the largest competing streaming platforms do not seem in a hurry to also buy sports broadcasting rights.
It’s hard to say whether or not the absence of sports will hurt Netflix in the long run – while driving customers to Prime Video. On the one hand, many Internet users accumulate streaming subscriptions so as not to miss anything. But on the other hand, the proliferation of platforms is also putting a strain on household budgets, which are increasingly forced to make choices.
Will the partially ad-supported subscription be enough to actually double the subscriber base? Share your opinion in the comments of this article!
