📺 Live Sports: Now Streaming on Netflix?
📺 Live Sports: Now Streaming on Netflix?
Netflix is trying everything possible to get rights to live sports streaming. Here's why.
Netflix seems to have it all.
All the trending shows from Money Heist to Bridgerton, The Crown to Squid Game, call Netflix their home.
In fact, it has routinely been winning the most number of nominations and awards at the Oscars and the Golden Globes.
But even after all of this, the streaming service saw its slowest subscriber growth this year. And this may not be a one-time phenomenon.
So, Netflix is pulling out all the guns to get subscribers.
The first shot: launch an ad-based subscription service.
The second and the one it is struggling at is launching live sports. But why live sports?
🧐 Why Does Netflix Want Live Sports?
Sports is something that connects billions of people worldwide.
Here, check out the live counter on the recent India-Pakistan match airing on Disney+ Hotstar:
Netflix also obviously wants this kind of viewership. So, it recently bid for the streaming rights for the ATP tennis tour for some European countries, but dropped out eventually.
It was also in talks to bid for the Women’s Tennis Association and cycling competitions in the UK but these talks also ultimately died down.
Wondering why all negotiations tanked? Well, such deals come with humongous costs.
How humongous?
A year back, Amazon Prime Video signed an 11-year deal to become the primary home of Thursday Night Football with the NFL for an eye-popping $1.2 billion per year!
And Viacom paid $3.1 billion to acquire IPL rights, managing to steal this deal for the first time from Disney+ Hotstar.
Are these high costs justified? Well, losing IPL rights has already messed up Disney's projections: It could end up losing around 50% of its subscriber base!
So, OTT services are eyeing live sports to retain subscribers in the competitive space.
Only problem? All OTT services are realising this at the same time.
Apple and Amazon are also going head to head to gain control of the NFL’s Sunday Ticket package of games.
ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery have reportedly paid a combined $24 billion to show the National Basketball Association games in the US till 2024-25. After that, the league is asking for an insane $75 billion for long-term rights.
And it's not just viewers that OTT services are chasing with these huge investments in live sports. This also happens to be one of the most appealing categories for advertisers.
Here's why:
Viewers who tune in for live sports watch it for hours, often with friends and families, meaning more views and overall more exposure for the brand in a few seconds.
Loyal fans of a league are also likely to stick around till the end of the league, which means less user deflection and
more brand recall.
And these ads can generate a lot of revenue. One IPL ad, especially one during an India-Pakistan match could cost Rs. 17-18 lakh.
Plus, a lot of users are now migrating from watching sports on cable to watching them on OTT platforms. So, Netflix is getting increasingly desperate to break into this space.
But due to high costs, Netflix is considering playing the long game here.
To bypass the ever-escalating costs of bidding for sports rights, Netflix executives have had discussions about buying lower-profile sports leagues in the US or other countries and making them big.
Netflix executives also believe that given the size of its platform, Netflix could turn lesser-known sports like surfing into big franchises and create new sporting tournaments or events.
Seems like a tall claim? Well, Netflix's Formula 1: Drive to Survive documentary truly put Formula 1 racing on the map for non-sports lovers. In fact, the documentary is so successful it is supposedly helping pay the drivers' bills.
And Netflix has also seen huge success with its basketball documentary The Last Dance. So, instead of bidding for live sports the company could also shift focus entirely on these documentaries. It may not bring large euphoric crowds like live sports but it could help the company get steady subscriber growth without burning too much cash.
However, for the time being, Netflix has its mind set on live sports, so it is only a matter of time before it acquires something. What sport do you reckon it will be?
On an interesting side note, Mukesh Ambani is also super interested in acquiring a sports team: Liverpool FC. And why not? It is one of the top earning football teams out there and has super high merchandise sales.
So, is live sports the new "in thing" and are we going to see many more investments in this space?
Only time will tell.
This article was written and researched by our intern Navya Gupta.
⚡In a line: Netflix desperarely wants to get into live sports streaming because it seems to be the only way it can increase subscribers.
💡Quick question: What sport would you want to watch on Netflix?
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