Live sports on
Netflix? It's not in the cards for the big subscription video-on-demand platform.
Speaking at an UBS media conference on Monday, Ted Sarandos, chief content officer, Netflix says the company is
still based around “on-demand viewing.”
“Sports, like live sports, for on-demand adds almost no value to it. People want to watch sports now. They want to know who won. They
don't want anybody to tell them who won.” Still, Sarandos would not rule it out: “At some point, sports might be the best place for a $10 billion investment.”
He
believes live TV -- cable and satellite and broadcast -- are the best places for sports “built perfectly to aggregate big audiences at the same time.” And that’s where
advertising come in -- also something that's not for Netflix.
“The best way to monetize that viewing is probably through advertising because you've gotten everything -- all these people
to do the same thing in one hour.”
Sports doesn’t fit into Netflix brand experience: “Do I have to get home and watch this at eight o'clock on Wednesday night?”
With regard to growth of more original programming, Sarandos expects to be spending at similar levels next year versus 2018. This has been reported to be around $8 billion for original TV and movie
content.
“At some point, you're going to hit a point of diminishing returns on the investment," he says. “Until we see that, we're enthused to push forward, meaning we keep
investing more in programming.”
Netflix consumption trends are still growing in the right direction: “We're also getting more users and more hours of usage from our existing
users.”