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The Town with Matthew Belloni

Inside Netflix’s Calculated Sports Strategy

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2024

⏱️ 30 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Matt is joined by Julia Alexander from Puck and Parrot Analytics to discuss what is and isn’t working in Netflix’s foray into live sports and sports-adjacent programming, and they outline how Netflix is experimenting to make a potential bid on live rights for a major sport. She reveals some data around Netflix viewership, explains why the sports documentary market is oversaturated, and outlines the importance of live sports for Netflix’s bottom line. Matt finishes the show with a prediction on the opening weekend box office for the new Mark Wahlberg film ‘Arthur the King.’ For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ click here. Email us your thoughts! thetown@spotify.com Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Julia Alexander Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

There are a lot of quarterbacks in the NFL draft this year.

0:04.0

My name is Ben Solac and I host the Ringer NFL Draft Show with Danny Kelly, Danny Hypatts, and Craig Horlebeck.

0:08.8

We cover trades, free agency, and the draft, which is, yeah, obviously.

0:12.2

We'll tell you about everything, which includes which quarterbacks are good,

0:14.5

which quarterbacks are bad, and which quarterbacks are just Kirk Cousins.

0:17.2

That is the Ringer NFL draft show. Search the bringer NFL draft show on Spotify.

0:24.1

It is Thursday, March 14th. Another day, another sports announcement from Netflix,

0:30.8

show or an event. Today was a Carlos Alcaraz docu series, the tennis player. It'll premiere

0:36.9

next year on Netflix, and it comes on top of a slew of sports content.

0:41.2

The Netflix Cup golf tournament, the Netflix slam tennis event, the $5 billion W.W.E. Raw deal.

0:48.8

And, of course, the Mike Tyson, Jake Paul fight coming this summer. Craig is counting down the days.

0:55.5

We know why Netflix is doing this. They sell ads now. People are fine watching ads in sports. They also know that sports content

1:00.9

is the holy grail of television. They want those eyeballs without paying the very expensive fees

1:06.7

for live sports rights, at least not yet. So they're experimenting. They're throwing a bunch of different kinds of content of viewers

1:13.2

and learning what works on streaming and what doesn't,

1:15.5

so they can figure out where to spend their big money

1:17.7

and whether it ultimately makes sense to go after real sports,

1:21.2

like the NBA or even NFL when those rights finally come up.

1:25.6

Breakpoint, the tennis reality show didn't work and just

1:28.5

got canceled, but F1, clearly that works on Netflix, although the new season of Drive to Survive

1:34.0

has dipped a bit. We're starting to get data on the sports initiative at Netflix. Plus, other

1:39.6

live events like comedy specials, reality show reunions, the SAG Awards.

...

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