Netflix’s Sarandos: ‘We Are Better Than Free’

6 Oct, 2011 By: Erik Gruenwedel

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Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said digital and physical piracy of movies is a catalyst that is driving the streaming service to explore select foreign markets.

While the chief content officer for Los Gatos, Calif.-based Netflix wouldn’t officially confirm the service would officially bow a subscription VOD platform in Spain, Sarandos said the country’s well-known piracy of entertainment was an attraction to open up shop in the country.

Sarandos, who was addressing MIPCOM confab attendee questions during a Q&A session, said he believed Spanish consumers would prefer to obtain higher-quality (resolution and sound) movies and TV shows through legitimate sources, if offered a user-friendly, fairly priced alternative.

The executive cited Netflix’s launch last year in Canada — a country he said was dominated by users downloading illegally pirated movies from file-sharing platform BitTorrent. Sarandos said that since the launch of Netflix Canada last year, the service has more than 1 million paying members and has supplanted BitTorrent as the preferred source for digital content.

“We are better than free,” Sarandos said. “And that’s what we are trying to do in other territories.”
 

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