Why Australian Netflix customers get a raw deal compared to US clients

Netflix has an estimated 6 million Aussie subscribers, but they share a common gripe – and they’re not alone in their complaints.

Netflix is a streaming behemoth, with a staggering 221.6 million subscribers worldwide, and an approximate worth of $176 billion.

But the 6 million Aussie subscribers share a common gripe – the lack of titles offered Down Under compared to overseas.

US users, for example, have a far bigger selection of titles to choose from, with over 5500 titles available in America as opposed to our measly 601.

But Aussies aren’t alone in this complaint – it’s a universal one, with the enforcement of copyright and royalty laws, as well as geographic licencing restrictions differing by country meaning everyone gets something different.

Netflix’s humble origins

This August marks the 25th anniversary of Netflix.

However, as tends to be the case, the origins of Netflix and how it rose to prominence read like a high budget Hollywood bankrolled blockbuster.

After all, you don’t break the mould of the entire cinematic tradition without pissing a few people off along the way.

Here are the SparkNotes of their quarter-century spanning story before a Netflix Original is inevitably made to airbrush the tale.

Legend has it that co-founder (and by all accounts, terrifying boss) Reed Hastings conceived the idea of Netflix after copping a $40 fine for returning a copy of Apollo 13 late to his local video store.

Of course, there are differing accounts of the origin story, with co-founder and former CEO Marc Randolph telling the far less sexy but more believable tale that the seeds of the idea that would become Netflix were first sown on a series of carpools to and from Silicon Valley where Randolph’s company Atria merged with Hasting’s first business Pure Software.

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Reed Hastings, chief executive officer of Netflix Inc., has given several versions of how the company was founded. Picture: Akio Kon/Bloomberg

After much deliberation and planning, the pair officially launched Netflix in 1998 as a DVD rentals business, with 30 employees and 925 titles available to choose from.

Quickly developing a cult following, Amazon owner Jeff Bezos tried to acquire the company for a low-ball offer of $14-16 million in 1999. Hastings reportedly rejected to offer on the plane ride home from the meeting.

Randolph and Hastings later attempted to sell off the company to Blockbuster in 2000 in the wake of the dot com crash.

The pair was promptly laughed out of the room with their $50 million asking price, in a meeting that has since gone down in entrepreneurial legend.

Netflix would go public 24-months later, selling .55 million common shares at $15.

Blockbuster meanwhile would file for bankruptcy in 2011.

Streaming, Netflix Originals and worldwide domination 

In 2007 Netflix began offering subscribers the option to stream some of its movies and television shows directly to their homes via the internet.

It was the groundwork for what would become the norm all around the world, with the company abandoning physical DVDs altogether by 2010.

Netflix’s move to steaming changed the world. Picture: istock

By 2011 the company had expanded into Latin America and Canada and was essentially a worldwide behemoth by 2016.

As the Netflix web expanded further abroad, the prospect of in-house original content quickly from a fanciful idea to an inevitable prospect.

The first title to premiere on the service exclusively (in the US) was Norwegian – American crime dramedy Lilyhammer, which first aired on January 25th, 2012.

However, the show was simulcast on Norwegian station NRK1, disqualifying it in the eyes of many as a true Netflix Original.

House of Cards is viewed by many as the first ‘Netflix Original’. Picture: Getty Images

Cinematic canon instead holds political drama House of Cards as the true Netflix Original debut, with the show’s ‘cinematic TV’ formula proving to be a huge success, paving the way for future world-dominating Original series.

By far and away, the most-watched Netflix Original series is last year’s Squid Game, which boasts an eye-watering 1.6 billion hours of combined watching time by subscribers, more than doubling the numbers of second-placed Bridgerton, with 656 million hours.