I'd be surprised if House of Cards goes down as a failure. It's an HBO-quality show that didn't cost Netflix nearly as much as some HBO series. Netflix bought

I'd be surprised if House of Cards goes down as a failure. It's an HBO-quality show that didn't cost Netflix nearly as much as some HBO series. Netflix bought 2 seasons for HoC for $100M. As HBO shows goes, a single season of Rome ran $100M+, Game of Thrones $50M+, the Boardwalk Empire Pilot $18M. It's unknown how much of the subscriber fee HBO takes home, but the Internet seems to think it's somewhere in the $8-10 range, not too far off from what Netflix charges. Yes, someone could sign up for a single month of Netflix, watch the series then cancel, but I'd expect the truly cheap/broke to simply download whatever they want to watch for free anyway. The show has wide appeal, plenty of hype, reviews are largely positive and if torrent interest is indicative of popularity, the peer counts for HoC are right on par with with other recent premium cable series.