SAN FRANCISCO — For a show that famously was about nothing, “Seinfeld” means a lot to many people, even 16 years after going off the air.
And that something could be a lot of attention, and maybe even more subscribers for Netflix Inc.
None other that “Seinfeld’s” eponymous star and co-creator, Jerry Seinfeld, hinted that his show could maybe make its way to Netflix’s streaming service sometime soon during a July 24 Ask Me Anything session on Reddit.
“You are a very smart and progressive person,” Seinfeld said to the questioner, and then added, “These conversations are presently taking place.”
And those conversations certainly involve money, and how much Netflix, or any other on-demand Internet video-streaming service, would pay for the rights, and prestige, to carry the nine seasons of “Seinfeld.” Options for watching it online are very limited: There are currently 10 episodes of the show streaming on Crackle, which is also home to Seinfeld’s popular “Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee” series.
While Netflix is well-established as the leading online video-streaming company, it’s still engaged in a battle for eyeballs, and prestige, with other streaming services like Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Instant video offerings.
Amazon showed it’s willing to challenge Netflix when earlier this year it gained the online subscription-streaming rights to several of HBO’s most popular shows, including “The Sopranos,” “The Wire” and “True Blood.” Like “Seinfeld,” many of these are shows that are no longer airing, but which, according to Michael Pachter of Wedbush Securities, may cost Amazon around $350 million a year to get.
Pachter said Amazon, which currently charges $99 a year for its Prime service that includes free two-day shipping on most purchases, “has an incentive to offer streaming for half of the Netflix price,” which is $7.99 a month for customers grandfathered in prior to Netflix raising its own US subscription rates by $1 a month.
For Netflix to grow — the company has big plans to soon launch its service in France, Germany and several other European countries — the company needs content. In order to pay for that content, it needs subscribers.
With 50 million subscribers worldwide, including 36.2 million in the US, and forecasts of adding 3.7 million more in the third quarter, Netflix is banking on international expansion, and the costs associated with it, as something that will pay off down the road and help finance the acquisition of more content that will, in turn, lead to more subscribers.
Getting “Seinfeld” would help Netflix show it’s renewing its commitment to new content. But the commitment would be a costly one, as the show’s current TV syndication deals expire in the fall and new contracts are expected to only increase in value. If Netflix does sign up “Seinfeld,” it will do so in the hopes that the show ends up earning them a lot more than nothing.