More Streamers License to Rivals

Next month’s long-awaited debut of Paramount+ hit Mayor of Kingstown on Netflix coincides with a raft of HBO Max shows streaming on Prime Video, reflecting an increasing merry-go-round of industry-wide licensing to rival services.

Prime Video’s just added earlier HBO/Cinemax staples like Band of Brothers, The Pacific, Banshee, Rome, The Night Of, Eastbound & Down, True Blood, Sex & the City, Big Love and Ballers. (Also new are non-HBO period dramas Wolf Hall and Domino.)

And coming soon to Netflix are Paramount series like Kingstown and Matlock, joining P+ stablemates The King of Queens, SEAL Team and Yellowstone.

Kingstown reportedly will launch October 5 globally, although it’s not yet listed as coming soon on the Netflix NZ site, whereas Matlock is confirmed for October 1.

Earlier this year Netflix picked up a suite of AMC+ titles including Dark Winds and Interview With the Vampire; others, like 61st Street, Parish and Turn, already have left the service.

The first three seasons of Kingstown can be streamed on Prime Video but not the fourth and fifth — which fuelled this site’s speculation the entire series was included in Netflix’s Paramount Skydance deal reported earlier this year.

Since that posting, other P+ series have turned up — Lawmen: Bass Reeves on Netflix, The Agency on Sky — but others, including Good Wife spin-off, The Good Fight, and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, remain stubbornly elusive.

Licensing to rival streamers is a win-win strategy for everyone, from the companies to subscribers. The likes of HBO Max can earn extra revenue from aging series while keeping shinier new fare exclusive to their own service.

At the same time, they can refresh their slates with titles from rivals that cost much less to license than to commission. These add immense value to their libraries and provide cash flow amid ebbing subscriptions.

And being sampled on a more popular platform, like AMC+ series on Netflix, can drive more traffic to the original service.

This is not a new trend — Disney has been by far the biggest licensee since streamers rediscovered the profitability of licensing — but it is escalating globally. Per one report:

The pursuit of streaming profitability over subscriber numbers has seen the major studio groups turn their attention to content licensing deals. The sweet spot is finding the balance between exclusivity and non-exclusivity, and in the case of non-exclusivity using that content to drive licensing revenue.

New research published by Ampere Analysis shows that after four years of major studios employing a walled-garden approach to the distribution of their TV content on streaming, licensing is steadily making a comeback.