The Netflix online video service announced Monday that it has acquired the US Seinfeld series broadcasting rights from 2021, a further step in the battle of platforms to flesh out their catalogs before an explosion of competition.
This is a jump for Netflix, which will already lose Friends at the end of the year, and The Office from 2021, the two most watched series on its platform. Seinfeld's digital rights are currently held by another platform, Hulu, a Disney subsidiary, since 2015. The transaction amount has not been disclosed. NBCUniversal has disbursed $ 500 million over five years for The Office and WarnerMedia 425, also over five years, for Friends.
A tendency to old series
The old series have become price assets in anticipation of the launch, in November, video subscriptions by Apple and Disney, then WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal in 2020. Sony, who is the true owner of the rights of "Seinfeld" and only allows the exploitation, never managed to take off his own platform, PlayStation Vue, and therefore had no interest in recovering the exclusivity of the series. In addition to Friends and The Office , Netflix will also lose all the Star Wars, Pixar and Marvel catalogs, of which it broadcast a part so far and which belong to Disney.