How Netflix turned from chasing HBO to signing a deal with WWE

How Netflix turned from chasing HBO to signing a deal with WWE

Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

Netflix isn’t just programming content only a small group of people would like — it’s intent on having a little something for everyone. During an interview with The New York Times, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos says he regrets comparing Netflix to HBO and its more limited selection of content in the past.

Here’s the quote, published in this 2013 GQ profile of Reed Hastings:

His dream project: a Netflix series created by Warren Beatty. “He’s great in long form,” Sarandos says. “His only problems have been when he’s constrained.” Sarandos is also warming up Jodie Foster, who directed an episode of Orange Is the New Black. “The goal,” he says, “is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.” His seductive pitch to today’s new breed of TV auteurs: a huge audience, real money, no meddlesome ecutives (“I’m not going to give David Fincher notes”), no pilots (television’s great sucking hole of money and hope), and a full-season commitment.

He tells the NYT interviewer, “What I should have said back then is, We want to be HBO and CBS and BBC and all those different networks around the world that entertain people, and not narrow it to just HBO.” He adds that “prestige elite programming” is a “very small” business, which isn’t what Netflix is about anymore.

Instead, Sarandos explains that Netflix must have a "broad variety of things that people watch and love.” That’s why not everything the service offers may not appeal to your taste. “The people who love ‘Ginny & Georgia’ will tell you, ‘Ginny & Georgia’ is great,” Sarandos says.

As my colleague Alex Cranz pointed out earlier this year, Netflix’s programming strategy makes it more like cable TV, as the service now has everything from Young Sheldon to The 100 — and soon, WWE’s Monday Night Raw.

Netflix is still eyeing the competition from Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Comcast. “Early on, we were discounted because I think the studios thought these tech guys are never going to figure out programming,” Sarandos tells the NYT. “We largely have proved them wrong. And I think it would be crazy for us to think, Well, these entertainment companies are never going to figure out the tech.”

Netflix has undergone a big transformation over the past few years, pushing ahead with some of the things it said it’d never do, including advertising and paid password sharing. As the streaming landscape shifts focus to revenue rather than subscriber numbers, we could see other streamers follow a similar path.