Warner Bros. Discovery’s decision to license shows like “Ballers” and “Insecure” to Netflix has paid off with viewership gains on Max for those titles, according to the streamer’s chief content officer Casey Bloys.
“What’s been nice about it is, without doing a thing on Max, the viewership of or engagement of ‘Ballers’ and ‘Insecure’ really saw a spike when it was on Netflix,” he said during the 2023 Code Conference. “You’re introducing it to more people, it’s marketing.”
While conventional wisdom in streaming over the last decade has been to keep content in-house, Bloys argued that, in the history of television and HBO, selling shows through syndication has been “a brass ring.”
“This is something we used to do all the time and the initial experiment with a couple of titles we’ve seen have an immediate, positive impact to Max,” he added. “Remember, everything we sell is co-exclusive. So it’s not like they come off Max and are only available elsewhere.”
While hit shows like “Succession” or “The White Lotus” likely won’t be given the same treatment, Bloys admitted that they have “thought about” selling previous seasons of “True Detective.”
“I think what you have to balance is not putting too much out there so people think, ‘Oh, I’ll just wait until it comes here or here.’ So I don’t really know the right answer. I don’t think anybody does,” he said.
