Why Did Netflix Pay Sony So Much for Seinfeld?

David Rosenthal says in 2019 Netflix paid Sony a reported sum well over 500 million dollars for five years of worldwide exclusive streaming rights to Seinfeld. Ben Gilbert says Netflix had Friends and The Office, shows he thinks became Netflix's top-viewed shows, and Netflix was losing both.

Ben Gilbert says streaming money for Seinfeld started in 2015 with a Hulu deal worth 150 million dollars over five years. David Rosenthal says in 2017 Netflix signed a personal deal to move Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee off Crackle, Sony's early in-house web streaming network, and to make two new stand-up specials. He says the first renewal of the Seinfeld streaming rights arrived in 2019. Ben Gilbert says Friends, The Office, and Seinfeld had all aired on NBC. Warner Brothers produced Friends and also controlled distribution, so Warner Brothers took Friends back for HBO Max. NBC owned The Office directly and took it back for Peacock. Sony owned the Seinfeld distribution rights and was not launching a streaming service. Netflix went to Sony for 180 episodes of sitcoms people already loved from the 90s and 2000s. Friends went to HBO Max and The Office went to Peacock in 2019, the same year as the Netflix deal.

Ben Gilbert says Sony was the studio still willing to license a giant rerun sitcom, so the Seinfeld price climbed from the 2015 Hulu deal to well over 500 million dollars.