Ted Sarandos
Analyst · Seaport Research Partners
I will take that and thank you, David, for the question. It gives us an opportunity to clarify, obviously. Our strategy is unchanged and it has always been and it continues to be, to combine best-in-class entertainment with industry-leading discovery, global distribution, and the best possible monetization. We want to be the must-have entertainment service, the first one members check for a great series or a great film, and the last service they would ever cancel. The anchor of that strategy are the Netflix originals. Differentiated, exclusive, ambitious, professionally produced series and films and live events. We have oriented the market to expect something great and new to watch every week, so we have to deliver on quality and quantity always. As for the live events, in a world of so much choice, we have titles like KPop and Wednesday and Bridgerton, and with all those things to choose from, live events like the Canelo-Crawford fight or the event-type sports that we do with the NFL and the MLB, these events break through. They stand out, they drive new membership, they add fuel to our ad revenues, they please our existing members, and they just generally enhance the value of Netflix. We take all of that strategy, we pair that exclusive programming with a broad offering of third-party programming, including second-run titles, deals we just did with Sony, Disney, Universal, and others. In addition to that, we look to new ways to bring third-party content onto the service as well to complement those originals, like we just did with TF1 in France, where you are ingesting a full network of programming. All that said, it is really important to remember, roughly 95% of our spend and nearly all of our revenue is focused on that core, where we see a long runway for future growth. Other areas that you mentioned, these are early-stage initiatives meant to explore future programming expansions, and we keep our focus and our investment in those areas very tight because the core is the critical growth engine.