Los Angeles (USA) (EFE).- The streaming giant Netflix, world leader in the sector with 232.5 million customers, intends to make the leap to broadcasting live sports to continue adding new subscribers and the broadcast of a golf tournament with celebrities could be the starting point.
The platform is negotiating the broadcast of a golf championship from Las Vegas (USA) next fall in which professional golfers and Formula 1 drivers, among other personalities, would participate, US specialized media reported on Wednesday.
This initiative, which would be Netflix’s first foray into live sports broadcasting, would feature the protagonists of its successful docuseries “Full Swing” and “Drive to Survive”, which respectively followed the careers of professional golfers and Formula 1 drivers during the 2022 season.
Live sports, an expanding business that Netflix takes with caution
Large conglomerates like Disney have on-demand services specialized in sports, such as ESPN, but Netflix executives have always been wary of getting into broadcasting this type of live content due, above all, to the high cost of purchasing of emission rights.
“We haven’t seen a profitable way to broadcast major sports… We’re not against doing it, we’re just for profit,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in January of last year.
This golf tournament would offer Netflix the possibility of experimenting with sports programming and verifying the real interest of its potential subscribers, without making an investment as high as the acquisition of the rights to one of the major football, basketball or baseball leagues would entail. .
It would also mean an economic incentive in terms of advertising for the platform, which has been offering subscription plans with ads at a reduced price since last year.
Streaming Changes
Netflix has already experimented with live streaming of entertainment events, such as a comedy special with Chris Rock that ran smoothly, but the platform flopped with the airing of its reality show “Love Is Blind,” which suffered from a broadcast crash. cut of an hour and it was decided to end up recording it.
Despite the times of change that the company led by Sarandos is experiencing, still concerned about efficiently controlling the use of shared passwords, Netflix continues to lead the streaming market and earned 8,162 million dollars in the first quarter of 2023, 3. 7% more than in the same period in 2022.