Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos On Advertising Rollout, Password Sharing, And Why The Company Is Punting On Sports Rights: “We’re Not Anti-Sports, We’re Just Pro-Profit”

deadline.com:

Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos affirmed recent comments from the company that they are not — despite strong indications from insiders as recently as last month — intending to bid on sports rights. “We’ve not seen a profit path” from “renting big-league sports,” the exec shrugged during a keynote session at the UBS Global Technology, Media & Telecom Conference. “We’re not saying there never will be,” he added,” but “dramatically expensive” rights have made sports effectively a “loss leader.” The company’s leap into ad-supported streaming last month is seen by many observers as a prelude to a serious sports effort, especially given the traction at Amazon and the big outlays by Apple in recent years.

Sarandos, echoing comments last week by Co-CEO Reed Hastings, says the return on investment isn’t compelling enough. “We’re not anti-sports,” Sarandos explained. “We’re just pro-profit.

We have yet to figure out how to do it. But I’m very confident we can get twice as big as we are without sports.” The streaming leader did “a thing that’s kind of unheard-of in the history of television” when it managed to get 165 million households to watch Squid Game “without having to premiere it after the Super Bowl.

We didn’t need a big loss leader to build a mass audience.” The success of Netflix’s behind-the-scenes series about Formula 1, Drive to Survive, led to reports that the streamer at least put out feelers when U.S.