Netflix “in the Sports Business” but Still Not Interested in Live Games

Rick Porter
·2 min read
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Netflix won’t be live-streaming any Formula 1 races, pro tennis tournaments or PGA Tour events anytime soon. But the company does plan to continue leaning into the niche it has carved out with sports-related documentaries like Formula 1: Drive to Survive, Break Point and Full Swing.

“We are in the sports business, but we’re in the part that we bring the most value to, which is the drama of sport,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said Wednesday during the company’s third-quarter earnings chat. Citing the shows above as well as Quarterback and the recently released Beckham — which has been the top English-language series on the streamer the past two weeks — Sarandos added, “We’re having a big impact on sports through the thing we’re most great at, which is the drama.”

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The question came up because a day earlier, Netflix announced its first live sports event: a nine-hole golf match, called The Netflix Cup, that will feature stars of Drive to Survive and Full Swing. The made-for-streaming event has echoes of The Match, a Warner Bros. Discovery Sports creation featuring athletes from different sports playing a round of golf — and, crucially for Netflix, such an event doesn’t involve paying a hefty rights fee to a league.

“I think about it as a great way of extending those great drama of sport brands that we’ve created,” Sarandos said. “But [there’s] no core change in our live sports strategy or licensing live sports.”

Should the Netflix Cup (the streamer’s third ever live event) go off smoothly, though, Sarandos said there could be room for more things like it in the future. “We are investing heavily in live capabilities,” he said, “so as demand grows for that and we find different ways that the live-ness can be part of the creative storytelling, we want to be able to do that at big scale.”

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