MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Netflix put another notch in its belt for live sports this month with the debut of World Wrestling Entertainment's flagship cable program. Our colleagues from The Indicator podcast, Adrian Ma and Darian Woods, explain what this means for the future of live sports on television.
DARIAN WOODS, BYLINE: You may have heard in recent years about a trend called cord-cutting. That's where customers increasingly abandon their cable TV subscriptions in favor of getting their content in other places, like streaming.
ADRIAN MA, BYLINE: And in a sense, cord-cutting is what World Wrestling Entertainment - WWE - is doing with one of its longest-running programs, called "Monday Night Raw," because, for the first time, it went live on Netflix. WWE and Netflix promoted the heck out of it.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "MONDAY NIGHT RAW")
UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Welcome to Raw on Netflix.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WOODS: This is part of a $5 billion deal, where Netflix agreed to pay WWE for exclusive rights to the show for the next decade. And it's not the only live sports deal Netflix has struck. It's also secured rights to stream National Football League games and the Women's World Cup. So why would Netflix pay billions of dollars for this content when it already has its own massive machine for generating movies and TV series? We put that question to Paolo Pescatore. He tracks media and telecom companies for an analyst firm called PP Foresight.
PAOLO PESCATORE: I think for Netflix, they need to diversify. They can't just solely rely on one genre, say, or just on-demand programming.
MA: Paolo says that Netflix is the global leader in streaming right now. And according to the company's third-quarter earnings report, it has about 282 million subscribers around the globe. But for Netflix, getting rights to stream live sports is about keeping its competitive edge. Thing is, Paolo says that this is easier said than done.
PESCATORE: You know, it's not just about acquiring those rights. Perhaps more important is ensuring that you have reliable infrastructure to deliver those streams at scale.
WOODS: The difficulty of streaming a live event around the world became clear when Netflix ran a boxing match between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson in November. Many of the tens of millions of people who tuned in were hit with lots and lots of buffering.
MA: Still, Netflix's early forays into live sports seemed to be successful at attracting viewers. For example, last month, Netflix, for the first time, streamed two NFL games live on Christmas Day. And each of those games drew about 14 million viewers, making it the most-watched English-language programs on Netflix that week.
WOODS: The way things are shaping up, Paolo predicts this content war between streamers and old-school cable and broadcast networks will continue. And in the future, some may look very different, changing business models or merging with other companies.
MA: One thing for sure, he says, is that the ones who survive will be looking for ways to offer their content online. And in fact, we're already seeing some old-school cable and broadcast providers distributing their content over the internet.
PESCATORE: Will we ever see the Super Bowl being streamed over a streamer over the next five years? Most likely not. But certainly, in the 2030s, we will get to see a big global sporting event being exclusively available over the internet.
MA: Darian, if you could see any big sports competition on Netflix, what would you want to see?
WOODS: Competitive game theory, maybe?
(LAUGHTER)
MA: Adrian Ma.
WOODS: Darian Woods, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF LEIKELI47 SONG, "MONEY") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
