Full season economics “very hard to make work”, says Sarandos Netflix’s tentpole sports rights include NFL, WWE and Fifa Women’s World Cup Company added nearly 19m subscribers and saw revenue rise to US$10.25bn in Q4 2024 Netflix arguably made its most significant move into live sports at the end of last year when it secured […]
- Full season economics “very hard to make work”, says Sarandos
- Netflix’s tentpole sports rights include NFL, WWE and Fifa Women’s World Cup
- Company added nearly 19m subscribers and saw revenue rise to US$10.25bn in Q4 2024
Netflix arguably made its most significant move into live sports at the end of last year when it secured the rights to exclusively broadcast the next two editions of the Fifa Women’s World Cup in the US. The deal marked the first time the company has acquired the rights to a sports competition in full and Sarandos said it “fits perfectly” into Netflix’s live sports strategy.
Netflix co-chief executive Ted Sarandos believes having live sports on the streamer is a “really fantastic thing” but remained coy about a move for full season broadcast rights.
“[The] Women’s World Cup is a real TV event,” he continued. “[It’s] totally consistent with what we’re trying to do here. These matches set a bunch of viewing records in 2023 and women’s sports have only become more interesting and more popular since. It’s a month-long event filled with drama, played by some of the greatest athletes in the world.
“It’s really important that those economics do work,” he continued. “And the big league sports, full league, full season economics, are very hard to make work”
Sarandos declined to comment on a possible deal with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). The mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion’s current contract with ESPN, the exclusive US home of the organisation’s events since 2019, expires at the end of 2025. Mark Shapiro, the president and chief operating officer of Endeavor and TKO Group, said in November that he expects Netflix at the negotiating table.
Sarandos added that viewership for WWE’s debut on Netflix was about two times the audience that Monday Night Raw was getting on linear television.
Net income for the period was US.87 billion, up from US8 million in Q4 2023, with the company also adding nearly 19 million subscribers to reach 301.6 million globally.
“And so, for us, we want to be able to bring value to the sport, like we have to date with WWE certainly, like we have with the NFL too, where we were able to bring a big audience, a young audience, a more global audience than linear television. But that has to be reflected in the deal as well.”
While Sarandos praised the impact of having select NFL and WWE action on Netflix, he said it “doesn’t really change the underlying economics of full season, big league sports being extremely challenging”.
When asked if acquiring full season rights would be appealing to Netflix, Sarandos said any move would be dependent on price.
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“We’re thrilled to have the time to start telling the stories of these teams and these athletes, like we’ve done so well with other sports with our series and documentaries.”
The streamer has kicked off 2025 with its debut broadcast of World Wrestling Entertainment’s (WWE) Monday Night Raw, which attracted more than 4.9 million views globally and averaging 2.6 million households in the US.
Netflix cited its content slate in the final stretch of 2024 as a key driver for its subscriber jump, which was a quarterly record for the company. On the live sports front, its offering included the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson boxing event and two National Football League (NFL) games.
Sarandos, though, did praise Netflix’s viewership numbers for its inaugural broadcast of the NFL on Christmas Day, which attracted an international audience of more than 30 million viewers and helped the company to a TV viewership share in the US of 8.5 per cent in December, tying with its best share set in July 2023.
“If there was a path where we can actually make the economics work for both us and the league, we certainly would explore,” he said. “But right now, we believe that the live events business is where we really want to be and sports is a very important part of that but it is a part of that expansion.”
Sarandos was speaking on an earnings call after Netflix reported revenue of US.25 billion in the fourth quarter, which was a jump of 16 per cent year-over-year (YoY).
However, despite the rosy numbers, Sarandos reiterated that Netflix would be “mindful of the bottom line” when it came to future rights acquisitions.
