Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos takes aim at the streaming giant’s rival services
Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has made some disparaging comments about the streaming giant’s competition during an explosive interview with Variety magazine.
Sarandos, who is celebrating his 25th anniversary with Netflix, spoke about transforming the company from a DVD subscription outlet to a streaming service that has completely changed the way Hollywood operates. Naturally, this dominance has led to some opposition from observers who believe he has destroyed the movie business forever, but Sarandos pays little attention to such claims. Instead, he focuses on Netflix’s 300 million subscribers and the $18 billion the company intends to spend on content in the coming year.
When talk turned to Netflix’s rivals and its dominant victory in the so-called “streaming wars,” though, Sarandos took the opportunity to give an honest opinion on their strategies. Variety noted that he said he didn’t understand Amazon’s Prime Video original content strategy in 2017, and Sarandos revealed he still feels similarly. “This is just me as an observer,” he mused. “Sports has been very effective. And I don’t know if that’s their entire strategy.”
Asked if sees Amazon getting to a place where it truly competes with Netflix in terms of original movies and shows, though, Sarandos was unequivocal. “I don’t,” he stated. “It’s hard for me to say. I don’t know what their long-term plans are. They’ve been streaming exactly as long as we have. They’ve been making original content exactly as long as we have.”
As for Apple – the streamer for whom Sarandos has just made his acting debut with a cameo as himself in The Studio – he was cutting. “I don’t understand it beyond a marketing play,” he admitted. “But they’re really smart people. Maybe they see something we don’t.”
Finally, Sarandos was asked about HBO/Warner Brothers and the puzzling decision to change the name of its streaming service from ‘HBO Max’ to ‘Max.’ “It was a surprise,” he confessed. “We would always watch what HBO was doing, and at one point, they had HBO, HBO Go, HBO Now and HBO Max. And I said, ‘When they’re serious, all those names will go away, and it’ll just be HBO.‘ I would have never guessed HBO would have gone away. They put all that effort into one thing that they can tell the consumer — it should be HBO.”