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Or it could mean that Netflix cannot cheaply licence a Portuguese show for Belgium, because they would have to effectively licence the whole regional block even
by usrusr 10y ago
Or it could mean that Netflix cannot cheaply licence a Portuguese show for Belgium, because they would have to effectively licence the whole regional block even though "everything except Portugal" would be orders of magnitude cheaper.
The same thing happens with sports all the time, very expensive to license in the home market, cheap as packaging peanuts in foreign markets (and used in pretty much the same way, for filling up inconvenient voids).
Previously, distributors had an incentive to popularize content across is home market boundary, with forced full region licensing this goes away.
(Edit: "effectively licence the whole block". The whole "may refuse to do business, but must stream everywhere" thing seems awfully muddy, my take is that it would be entirely to the rights holder wether they would consider a licence for that "Irish residents only" an expensive EU wide license or a much cheaper Ireland only)
- Freak_NL 10y agoCertainly, there is that drawback, but on the whole Europeans (myself included) will benefit. In terms of content Netflix has very little that is desired exclusively in certain countries; most of its backlog is English films and series, and sports is not Netflix' expertise. For the customers this should be a welcome change; nothing is more annoying than a global digital services provider deciding for you that you cannot watch content X because you live in country Y. Let me choose if I want to watch Portuguese sitcoms instead of unilaterally deciding that all Dutch don't like those. While I do like Netflix' globally available original material, I also want a legal way to enjoy the long tail of film/television content. This kind of legislature helps.