Sarandos: Live sports broadcasting is a structurally low-margin distribution business
Ted Sarandos · Nikhil Kamath x Netflix Co-CEO, Ted Sarandos | People by WTF | Ep. 10 · Nikhil Kamath · Jun 7, 2025 · at 1:07:13
Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos explains to Nikhil Kamath why Netflix avoids bidding large sums for long-term traditional live sports rights like the IPL or NFL.
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“For me, I believe that big sports, cricket in, in India, the NFL in the United States is, those leagues are so powerful. The consumer demand for them is so high, they should get all the money. So whoever's delivering it, it's just a distribution business. Should be very, very low margin just for distribution only. So if I had that game and then next week I lose it and it goes to the next person, that audience, that whole audience can go from here to here. So at the end of the day, I don't know why you would lose a lot of money on a sport because it's, you'll never get to the place where it's profitable.”
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