Netflix again reported strong overall subscriber growth for its most recent quarter, but the company said it can still accelerate that growth through pay TV, ISP and mobile provider partnerships.
Greg Peters, chief product officer for Netflix, said Tuesday during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call that deals like the company’s recently expanded agreement with Sky can help Netflix grow its audience faster.
Over the weekend, European pay TV operator Sky said that it signed a new multiyear agreement with Netflix. The Netflix app and some of the service’s content has already been available for years to Sky subscribers, but now customers who use Sky Q have the option of taking up Netflix’s basic plan directly from their pay TV service.
“It starts by just being available on the set-top box or the device that they’re using to watch TV. We can put Netflix there and make it easy to see the service and potentially sign up there. But increasingly now with bundles, we’ve removed yet another point of friction,” Peters said.
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In the U.S., Netflix has formed tight integration deals with pay TV providers like Comcast and mobile operators like T-Mobile.
While pay TV partnerships can simplify Netflix access for traditional video service subscribers, there’s also a growing demand from consumers outside the pay TV ecosystem for reaggregation of streaming platforms. Peters said he anticipates that there are business models that make sense for Netflix to bundle together with multiple streaming content services.
However, he said that most of the bundles Netflix has are connected to existing legacy pay TV services and mobile or broadband internet service plans.
“I think there are multiple different opportunities to find the right mix where we’re able to introduce Netflix as part of a set of offerings and just make it simple for people to sign up, and it’s logical and intuitive for them to go do so,” Peters said.