Much of the licensed content that viewers are used to finding on over-the-top (OTT) platforms like Netflix or Hulu is about to become exclusive to other companies. And that fragmentation will continue as Apple, Disney, Comcast’s NBCU and AT&T’s WarnerMedia launch their own streaming services.
Disney announced that it will be pulling its content from Netflix, and analysts speculate that WarnerMedia will pull some of its popular titles like “Friends.” In late April, The Wall Street Journal reported that NBCU is having internal discussions about removing “The Office” from Netflix so that it can feature the show exclusively on its own platform. Netflix responded with a tweet reminding people that it has rights to the show "until 2021—at least."
Meanwhile, Netflix continues to invest in producing original shows. In April, the company announced it was offering $2 billion in debt to fund content spending and other expenses. This was Netflix’s second debt financing round in six months. In October 2018, it offered $2 billion in debt to fund content spending.
According to Netflix, it spent $12.04 billion on content in 2018. That figure will rise to around $15 billion this year and to more than $17 billion in 2020, per estimates from investment bank BMO Capital Markets. (These expenditures are calculated on a cash basis—before Netflix writes off the cost of original productions. The costs after the write-off are significantly lower. For example, in 2018, the post-write-off figure that Netflix reported was $8 billion.)