According to the Wall Street Journal, Netflix could soon expand its offer and broadcast live sports. This would make one more major player in this expensive market.
Netflix is seriously considering streaming sports this fall. THE wall street journal understands that Netflix could soon expand its offer and broadcast live sports. The Californian firm with 230 million subscribers has not confirmed anything for the moment.
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According to the daily, Netflix is considering broadcasting a golf tournament, but a celebrity tournament with professional golfers and Formula 1 drivers. This would probably happen in the United States.
Netflix already broadcasts sports documentaries
Netflix already broadcasts Full Swing, a documentary series behind the scenes of the professional golf circuit, so it’s an environment that the Californian firm knows well. There is also drive to survive, another documentary series, on F1. It is in its fifth season and it is very popular in the United States, a country where the sport has historically struggled to establish itself.
“We are not anti-sports, we are pro-benefits”, announced at the end of last year Ted Sarandos, the boss of Netflix. Today, broadcasting live sports is very expensive. The rights reach hundreds of millions of euros, sometimes billions. In addition, Netflix will already spend 17 billion dollars on the purchase and production of content this year, including documentary series on the Tour de France, American football or F1. But Netflix’s subscriber growth isn’t as dramatic as it was during the pandemic.
Live experience
A competitor, Apple TV+, has already taken the risk with the MLS, the American football championship, and the MLB, the baseball championship. Amazon Prime has entered the fray. The American group broadcasts Ligue 1 and Roland-Garros in France.
Going live remains a very particular rhythm that does not yet stick exactly to Netflix. In April, the live broadcast of an episode of love is blind, his reality show, ended in a fiasco due to technical problems. A few days earlier, the very first direct in the history of Netflix, a show by comedian Chris Rock, had gone off without a hitch. A friendly golf tournament, a one-time event without too many stakes, would represent a kind of trial balloon, a test of the capabilities of the platform.