Netflix’s CEO says influx of streaming sites will cause it to spend more on content costs

Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings said the arrival of new streaming services will push production costs so high it will make its original British Royal family drama The Crown “look like a bargain.”

“It’s a whole new world starting in November,” Hastings said at the RTS television industry conference in Britain, Reuters reported. “Someday The Crown will look like a bargain.”

The show, which is about the life of Queen Elizabeth starting from her coronation at 25, has cost about 100 million pounds (about $165 million CAD) to make and has won accolades across the board. The show has brought immense success for the California-based streaming giant, so much so that it helped grow its subscriber count to 152 million, Reuters noted.

But in November, a suite of streaming sites are going to arrive including Disney+ and Apple TV+.

Hastings indicated that after the third season launches in November, the streaming site intends to make a “big increase” in investments into British television production next year.

“The possibilities the internet brings for growing entertainment is phenomenal, over the next several years, with all of the expansion, I think we are going to see a very large increase in how much content is produced here in the U.K.,” he said.

The CEO indicated that this year alone the company has spent 400 million pounds (about $663 million CAD) in the U.K. and “that’s continuing to grow, following our subscriber base.”

He said that the company wasn’t going to double that but that it was going to be “a big increase.”

Source: Reuters