Netflix is planning to join Apple and Amazon on the live streaming sports bandwagon according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal.
However, the streaming pioneer isn’t planning to bid for the rights to top events like the Premier League, Major League Baseball or Major League Soccer, as Amazon and Apple have respectively.
The WSJ report said Netflix plans to host the tournament in Las Vegas this autumn, bringing together the stars from the Formula 1: Drive to Survive and Full Swing reality series.
It’ll be be less serious than that and is much more inline with what we’ve come to expect from Netflix’s irreverent programming line-up that has started to shift its focus towards reality TV rather than high profile prestige drama.
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Like much of the streaming services line-up, it’ll leverage its existing licensing deals, rather than going after some of the sporting world’s Crown Jewels, as many of its streaming rivals have. Yes, it would be live sports, but hardly the kind of content that would encourage new subscribers into the fold en masse as Amazon achieved with its exclusive Premier League games.
While that might be enticing to fans of those reality TV shows, it may not make many headlines in the sporting world. According to the report, it’d be a one-time special event and is unlikely to have much on the long beyond the celebrity Pro-Am novelty tournaments we see all the time.
It wouldn’t require a long commitment over a number of years – like Apple’s ten year arrangement with Major League Soccer – and it wouldn’t ‘t require hundreds of millions in investment like Amazon’s deal with the EPL.
Indeed, it feels just as disposable as much of the Netflix output these days, which makes it difficult to fully invest in a show due to the slew of cancellations that seemingly come without rhyme or reason.
Netflix has so far been hesitant to commit to live sports, although the company has changed tack on a number of its tenets in the last few years. In a desperate attempt to maintain and attract new subscribers in an increasingly competitive streaming environment, the company has gone back on several founding principles.
The company has also backtracked on running advertisements within content and, more recently, its attitude to password sharking.
Netflix has begun to explore live streamed events and its first ever was a stand-up comedy event starring Chris Rock that aired earlier this year.
“I’m not saying we never would do sports, but we would have to see a path to growing a big revenue stream and a big profit stream with it,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said last year.
