Netflix in Australia will create an even more fragmented market

NETFLIX is officially launching in Australia next year. But don’t get excited just yet. It may just make things worse for Aussie consumers.

FOR the past 12 months, Aussies have been begging for US TV and movie streaming service Netflix to launch in Australia. The company finally announced yesterday that it will be in March, but prepare to be disappointed.

Netflix in Australia will have a lacklustre library of titles, as shown by the fact that yesterday’s launch titles were mediocre at best and did not include any of the big exclusives that have garnered Netflix popularity, including House of Cards and Orange is the New Black.

“All Hail King Julien” is one of the “big” exclusives being brought over by Netflix.

Why? Because even though Netfix commissioned the shows in the United States, their Australian rights are owned by Foxtel (partly owned by News Corp Australia, the publisher of news.com.au). It’s not just these shows either that will be affected by this, with new Australian streaming service Stan claiming the exclusive rights to Breaking Bad spin-off Better Call Saul.

If you think that you can simply continue to use your US Netflix account just as you are now once it launches here, think again. It’s no secret that Netflix makes it easy for international users to use a work-around to access the service. Once it launches locally, however, the company will want local users to access the Australian content, rather than US, and will most likely make it more difficult to access the US library.

“House of Cards” fan? You will still need your Foxtel subscription.

This will mean that for those who subscribe to Netflix to watch shows like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black, they will no longer have access and will be forced to subscribe to Foxtel to legally watch the shows.

Foxtel declined to comment on how much longer it has the rights to these Netflix commissioned shows. But if Netflix was serious about launching in Australia, we can’t imagine they signed off Down Under for any longer than another series of each. Even so, it is still a long time before Netflix gets the content in Australia.

Critically acclaimed show “Orange is the New Black” will be missing from Netflix at launch.

It isn’t just Netflix-commissioned content that it will be missing, Foxtel, Quickflix, Stan and free-to-air channels all have exclusive content deals with shows that are available on Netflix in the US. While we might still get older seasons of those shows, newer episodes will be non-existent.

Sure, Netflix will have the exclusive rights to Gotham, Longmire and more, but it won’t have enough to warrant it as your only subscription, and will just contribute to a horribly fragmented Australian market.

Batman spin-off “Gotham” will be one of the bigger shows available on Netflix in Australia.