Analysis: Netflix Users Aren’t Very Interested in Live Golf Tournament Yet, Showing Service Has More Groundwork to Lay
It’s early days, but so far Netflix’s announcement that it will livestream a celebrity golf tournament featuring players from its PGA series “Full Swing” and Formula 1 racing show “Drive to Survive” seems to be stuck in a sand trap.
According to the data solutions firm Civic Science, Netflix users are not yet wild with enthusiasm about the tournament. Civic Science conducted a survey which found that only 22% of adults in the United States are either “somewhat” or “very” likely to watch the tournament, meaning that 78% of respondents weren’t yet compelled to watch the event.
In fact, Netflix users aren’t too crazy about the idea of watching any live sports on the service, at least not yet. Civic Science found that 34% of current Netflix customers are “somewhat” or “very” likely to watch sports on the platform. People who aren’t subscribed to Netflix don’t see live sports as a big draw for the service, as only 23% said they were at least somewhat likely to view any live sporting events there.
To be sure, interest in the golf tournament will grow as more details are released. “Full Swing” and “Drive to Survive” are very popular shows for the platform and curiosity about the world’s largest streaming service finally making its initial foray into live sports will also get viewers engaged. Still, there’s no doubt that Netflix representatives are wishing the initial interest in the event was a bit higher.
It’s likely that some of the thus-far tepid audience response is due to Netflix’s technical issues in livestreaming. Its first-ever livestreamed event was the stand-up comedy special “Chris Rock: Selective Outrage,” which experienced only minor glitches. But its next livestream of a reunion episode of the unscripted Netflix series “Love is Blind” went horribly wrong, leaving many users unable to access the stream until the episode had concluded.
The data from Civic Science affords even more relief to representatives of streamers like Peacock and Paramount+. It can be intimidating when a larger company steps into a business segment like sports streaming that smaller companies have been building slow success in, but the NBCUniversal and Paramount streamers have little to fear from Netflix yet. Their platforms are already well-associated with sports streaming, whereas Netflix has to build its livestreaming reputation from the ground up.
Perhaps the timing of Netflix’s foray into live sports is being dictated by its new rules against password sharing. Netflix officially laid out its guidelines for sharing accounts in late May, amidst howls of consumer anger. Live sports are incredibly popular overall, and Netflix may have been keeping back the good news about its reported golf tournament plans until it had given users the bad news about password sharing first.
Netflix didn’t get to be the world’s largest streaming service by not taking risks, and the numbers from Civic Science are not going to dissuade it from trying to livestream its celebrity golf tournament this fall. But the company clearly has more work to do to engage customers and potential customers and build audience enthusiasm for its upcoming celebrity golf tournament.
Netflix
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