Global entertainment and streaming giant Netflix has said that it has no plans to foray into live sports broadcasting anytime soon, a space that its counterparts such as Amazon and Facebook are heavily investing.
The US-based company’s vice-president of business development EMEA, Maria Ferreras, has said that the US-based company is prioritising new international partnerships for growth rather than pursuing live sports broadcasting. Netflix’s vice president of business development EMEA was speaking at the international broadcasting convention in Amsterdam.
Netflix, since last year, has announced a raft of content partnerships to produce docuseries with the likes of Italian football champions Juventus, Argentine football giants Boca Juniors and the Formula 1.
Maria said that the company is more focused on developing partnerships, such as its new tie-up with Sky, which sees Netflix made accessible to Sky subscribers in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Italy. “We’re committed to partnerships. We want to keep exploring partnerships because we believe they bring growth, they foster dynamism, and also they provide a great consumer experience,” said Maria.
“We’re taking them to the next level, both in terms of number, in terms of countries where we’re going to be doing this, and also in terms of how deep we want to go into these partnerships. We are now ready to go deeper and really explore the three parts in a much bigger way.”
Maria, however, said that Netflix has no plans to rival Amazon for live rights. She said that Netflix has looked to explore sport through its documentary programming, where it is capable of adding value to the viewer experience, but added that the same would not be true for live sports coverage.
“I think in terms of live sports there’s nothing we can do differently from a television broadcaster, so it doesn’t add additional value,” she said. “You can never say never, but there’s no plans to go into that.”
Netflix’s stance may well have been informed by some of the issues experienced by streaming companies that have recently made their first steps into sports broadcasting. Negative responses to Amazon’s recent UK coverage of the US Open tennis tournament, for example, saw the company block users from posting further reviews, while over-the-top (OTT) broadcaster DAZN was forced to apologise to Italian viewers after its inaugural coverage of Serie A was interrupted by buffering issues.
With Internet majors like Amazon and Facebook already making major moves into the sports rights market many believed that Netflix could soon follow suit.
E-commerce giant Amazon recently acquired a domestic rights package for Premier League. Amazon Prime Video, which first entered the live sports rights market with NFL’s Thursday Night Football games in 2017 season, now has some of the premium tennis content in its portfolio including ATP World Tour, ATP Finals, all the four grand slams and Laver Cup.
Social media mogul Facebook, that surprised everyone with its unsuccessful ₹3,500 crores bid to acquire Indian Premier League (IPL) digital rights, has recently made tremendous strides acquiring LaLiga rights in the sub-continent and Premier League in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, and Vietnam.
Facebook Watch, the company’s very own streaming service initially launched in US, was rolled out globally last month with plans to spend reportedly over $2 billion on content acquisition for global streaming.
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