No Sports, More Ad-Tiers: CEO of Netflix

Netflix, a major streaming service, is undergoing significant modifications.

In addition to the ad-supported tier that was previously revealed and made available, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has revealed the company’s future financial model, which excludes sports for the time being and includes upcoming additional ad tiers.

In spite of competition from rival streamers like Amazon, Apple, and even Google for a deal with the NFL for their Sunday Ticket Package, Sarandos reportedly states that they have no plans to include sports in their portfolio of goods.

As a matter of fact, NFL’s Thursday Night Football is currently available on Amazon Prime Video, a Netflix rival with a $1 billion annual price tag that seems to be paying off.

Speaking on Monday at the UBS Global TMT Conference in New York City, Sarandos said that live sports don’t fit the streaming economic model since the programming is better suited for pay TV.

The streaming service “can get twice as big without sports,” according to Sarandos.

At the conference, Sarandos stated, “We haven’t seen a profitable approach to renting huge sports. We’re just pro-profit; we’re not anti-sports.”

Given Amazon’s success with hosting live football, Netflix may be passing up a significant chance for cash flow and instead be looking for other ways to increase revenue, such as adding more ad packages.

In addition, Sarandos indicated Wednesday that Netflix is looking to offer more than only Netflix with Ads, which debuted this past November and costs $6.99, according to CNBC.

Moreover, Sarandos went ahead to iterate, “We have multiple tiers today, so it’s likely we’ll have multiple ad tiers over time, but nothing to talk about yet.

And the product itself will evolve, I suspect, pretty dramatically, but slowly, gradually.”

Conclusion

Stay tuned for more interesting news updates.