Netflix just paid somewhere near $500 million (the exact terms have not been disclosed) to acquire Seinfeld streaming rights beginning in 2021 after Hulu’s right to stream the series runs out.
It’s been more than 21 years since the series finale of the breakthrough NBC sitcom Seinfeld aired it’s highly anticipated finale episode in May of 1998, but Netflix just paid somewhere near $500 million (the exact terms have not been disclosed) to acquire Seinfeld streaming rights beginning in 2021. The Hulu streaming service – which is majority owned by the Walt Disney Company – will continue to own the rights to Seinfeld until then.
Netflix previously paid $100 million dollars for the rights to broadcast the 1990’s other most popular sitcom, “Friends” for a single year, but lost that show – as well as “The Office” – earlier this year.
With Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO, Showtime and new streaming offerings from Disney and Apple coming soon, the race to acquire the content that viewers will keep paying between $5 and $15 a month to consume is heating up… Original shows are the holy grail for streaming services, hooking customers on binge-watching storylines that can’t be found anywhere else, but old classics like Seinfeld also keep viewers coming back for their favorites from the past.
MacDailyNews Take: Thanks to low-priced entries like Disney+, with a huge library that, ahem, dwarfs Netflix’s and the quality-over-quantity Apple TV+, prices for services like Netflix (top-level plan costs $16/month) will be put under competitive pressure, likely driving down prices for cord-cutting consumers as competition heats up!