Streaming giant Netflix Inc. (NASDAQ:NFLX) is expanding its offerings to include reality competitions, music shows and celebrity interviews as it seeks to grow its subscriber base and increase advertising revenue from ad-supported plans.
What Happened: Netflix is no stranger to live events, having previously streamed items such as comedy specials, live golf tournaments, boxing and National Football League games.
The streamer is rapidly lining up a content library that includes World Wrestling Entertainment streams, Women's World Cup matches, more NFL games and boxing specials.
Netflix is also launching multiple entertainment-themed reality competitions later this year. The streamer is rebooting "Star Search" and will premiere "Building the Band" next week. A new trivia show, "What's in the Box," with host Neil Patrick Harris, was also recently announced.
A new Wall Street Journal report says Netflix has held talks with Spotify Technology (NYSE:SPOT) to partner for more entertainment-themed events and specials.
Among the topics discussed with Spotify include a live concert series, music award shows, big celebrity interviews and short turnaround time documentaries, according to the report.
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Why It's Important: Netflix's deeper push into live sports, reality competitions and entertainment comes as the streamer will lose two of its top series ever after 2025.
"Squid Game" recently wrapped with its third and final season in June and "Stranger Things" will end with a fifth and final season later this year. Each of those shows will remain important to the company's live experiences, video games and consumer products going forward and could also be subject to spinoffs to keep the franchises going.
Losing top hit series could be tough for Netflix to replace, but comes at a time when the streamer has content across every genre, for every age group and is increasing its live content to help boost live viewing and advertising revenue.
Recent success stories for the streamer include dating series "Love is Blind" and reality competition "Million Dollar Secret."
"Building the Band" could be the company's newest hit based on the success of music competitions on other networks. The series is similar to "The Voice" with an element of band members not seeing each other until they start rehearsing together.
Jeff Gaspin, who previously greenlighted "The Voice" for NBC, is helping Netflix with its unscripted content.
Gaspin said Netflix's new reality competitions could be a mix of live and not live, including live reunion shows. "Building the Band" will stream on demand, while "Star Search" will be live to give fans a chance to vote.
"We don't want to do live for live's sake," Gaspin said. "If we are going to do live, we should have a reason."
NFLX Price Action: Netflix stock is up 1.25% to $1,300.92 on Wednesday versus a 52-week trading range of $588.43 to $1,341.15. Netflix stock is up 45% year-to-date in 2025.
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