Netflix, like any platform, likes to have a phenomenon on its hands, the television equivalent of a blockbuster, that series that attracts subscribers to stay in front of the screen with an obsessive instinct. The summer of 2016, for example, surprised the industry with Stranger Things, a series that appeared in its catalog with hardly any promotion. But, in the hot months of this year, the surprise was the opposite: the unprecedented success of Suits, a series already finished and for which they simply acquired the broadcast rights. And, as a result, Suits could have shown Netflix the way forward.
“This legal drama originally premiered on USA Network in 2011 and aired until 2019. Despite having been available on other streaming services, the debut of the first eight seasons on Netflix in July broke viewing records,” it was reported from Netflix. Rival platform Peacock, which owns the series and also has it in its catalog, is even looking to franchise Suits due to its popularity in the competition. Given this success, Netflix is clear, as reported by Deadline: “As the competitive environment evolves, we have the opportunity to license new successful titles to complement our original programming.”
The figures are simple. Let's imagine that Netflix wants to produce a legal drama with a star on board to ensure that they have someone with enough weight to carry the series. The budget per episode could be around five million. So, if they wanted to produce a complete season of eight episodes, the budget would skyrocket to around 40 million for those eight installments, without talking about a high-cost project and without taking into account the promotion costs.
Instead, for a similar price, he was able to acquire the broadcast rights to 124 episodes of Suits from NBCUniversal. If it convinced the viewer to take a look or watch it again (which happened), it could retain the viewer for more than 100 hours with a single piece of content. And, as American portals report, the platforms that want to take over the legal drama must shell out around $200,000 and $400,000 per episode. Is it a considerable amount compared to the Spanish market? Yes. Is it a bargain price for the impact and audience generated? And so much!
With this result and the changes in the industry, Netflix's priority changes again. After beginnings where priority was given to the acquisition of streaming rights for series broadcast on linear television, Ted Sarandos proposed to expand its own production to have original series. He had to take advantage of its stock market value to invest and finance the contents. The reason? The studios were preparing their streaming services to amortize their content and, if they decided to stop selling series and movies, they had to create a catalog.
In 2023, however, the market is at another point. The streaming bubble burst when studios realized that low-cost monthly payments were not enough to obtain the economic return that their productions would have previously given by walking through movie theaters or linear television, the video-on-demand market, online subscriptions. cable packages, international sales and licensing these titles to third parties. Unless it's Netflix, which not only has more subscribers than the competition but also knows how to monetize them, platforms are now interested in selling the rights to their original content.
You just have to see that, for example, Suits was already available for streaming in the United States: it could be seen on Peacock, NBCUniversal's platform. There, however, Aaron Korsh's creation did not generate any type of momentum in consumption or conversation. On Netflix it became the series of the summer both due to the number of subscribers and the platform's ability to retain users.
In a more moderate way, there are more works that have been claimed as new audience successes in the American market: the incorporation of HBO's Ballers in the catalog allowed The Rock series, already concluded on its channel of origin, to generate again consumption and, most importantly for Warner Bros. Discovery, money.
So, instead of having dead content in the catalogues, the platforms have a way to make economic profit from their veteran titles: sell them to third parties once their subscribers have already taken advantage of them. They shouldn't even reach exclusivity agreements as Suits proves. And Netflix, in this industrial context, has the opportunity to bring its next nostalgic hit to the table. What series do you think has the potential to become a phenomenon with minimal investment and simply including it as one of the featured contents in the catalog?
