The beginnings of Netflix were not easy, in 2000 and with three years in operation, the company founded by Hastings and Randolph sent DVD movies by mail; Although it added new users, the company accumulated large losses. To mitigate the impact, Selling Netflix to Blockbuster was positioned as an opportunity, but the CEO of the big DVD rental company, John Antioco declined the $ 50 million offer..
After a few years, Blockbuster went bankrupt and Netflix positioned itself in the market. Ironically the platform streaming will put out a series about the last Blockbuster in the world.
As a context, the selling proposition for Blockbuster was a move in the face of the crisis that the co-founders had already seen. This was not the only failed deal that could change the course of the big company and the streamingIn 1998, Jeffrey Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, wanted to buy Netflix to enter the video market and eliminate competition from online DVD purchases.
The sale was an escape from the little income the company generated, since during Netflix’s early years, the center of its business was a Web in which people could choose films and the selection arrived in their mail on DVD, but with the limitations of logistics it was difficult to send their films in a single day. In addition to the fact that Netflix did not have the scalable business model that currently offers streaming and its costs were high.
Blockbuster’s rejection of the offer
Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph tells in his book “That will never work: The birth of Netflix and the power of great ideas” that after several attempts to meet with the DVD rental giant, the company agreed to negotiate the sale of his business with Blockbuster CEO John Antioco, but the offer was declined.
This was due to the fact that Blockbuster had its Total Access service, which shortly after was replaced with the Netflix subscription model that allowed you to rent all the DVDs you wanted.
In 2007, Netflix launched its first streaming service streaming, and three years later Blockbuster announced its bankruptcy.
World’s Last Open Blockbuster and Netflix’s New Comedy
As of today, there is only one Blockbuster branch in the world located in Oregon that was allowed to continue using the brand and is rented on Airbnb to spend a weekend between what was the DVD rental empire.
According to Deadline, Netflix will release a comedy series about the latter establishment with the name of “Blockbuster”, the production will be in charge of Universal and will star Randall Park
The story will consist of 10 episodes and will tell the story of how the protagonists try to carry out a business that is not adapting to the future needs of the market.
To emphasize the success of Netflix, until the last quarter of 2020 it had 203.7 million subscribers worldwide. And, in the second quarter of 2021, the platform added 1.54 million subscribers, up from its estimate of one million. However, during the pandemic it lost more than 430,000 subscribers in the region where the service is most consumed: the United States and Canada.
Likewise, the most recent data from Netflix mention that, in the third quarter, they added 2.5 million subscribers.
See more: