The folks at Netflix are big sports fans—but don’t expect the company to fight to own a league’s full-season rights.
Executives at the streaming giant, which late Tuesday reported quarterly results and a fresh outlook that has Netflix (NFLX) stock jumping today, cited live events like the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight and the Christmas Day NFL games it showed as key reasons its fourth-quarter content “outperformed even our high expectations.”
Live programming was also named among its top priorities for the year ahead.
“We’re not focusing on acquiring rights to large regular season sports packages,” the company said, noting its interest in sports but also comedy. “Rather, our live strategy is all about delivering can’t-miss, special event programming. … Although our live programming will likely be a small percentage of our total view hours and content expense, we think the eventized nature will result in outsized value to both our members and our business.”
Sports continues to be a battleground in the video space, with outlets coming …