Netflix Plans More Podcasts, Vertical Video, Even Paramount Shows

Netflix’s fourth-quarter earnings call was a bounty of promises for new kinds of content on the streaming giant’s platform, even without immediate prospects of any new shows from its $83 billion bid for Warner Bros. One surprise: among the new initiatives and licensing deals is one with Paramount, Netflix’s rival to buy Warner assets.

Netflix comes into 2026 with after a strong Q4, and 2025, with quarterly revenues up $1.8 billion, or 18 percent, from the same period a year earlier. And though the company has stopped regularly reporting subscriber numbers, its investor letter mentioned that subscriber rolls now top 325 million, which translates to nearly 1 billion viewers. That’s up from 301 million subs at the end of 2024.

And those subscribers will be getting a much wider variety of content to watch, the company’s executives said in today’s earnings call, as Netflix expands into new programming designed to keep people locked onto its market-leading platform across an array of experiences:

• More Vertical video. So-called vertical video is the hottest thing in Hollywood, Eastern Europe, and China, where the craze started for mobile-first intensely hooky soap operas whose dozens of cliffhanger episodes typically last no more than a couple of minutes each. Companies big and small are jumping into the business, a trend that likely will accelerate now that the SAG-AFTRA actors union has promulgated a model contract for such projects with budgets less than $300,000. That’s opened the door for big studios with existing SAG-AFTRA deals to jump in. Co-CEO Greg Peters said Netflix already has some vertical content, mostly clips from its many shows, available on its mobile app. Expect actual programming soon enough after experimenting with vertical video for six months: “Really, this is part of a broader upgrade of our mobile (user interface),” Peters said. “We will expand later in 2026, as it becomes a platform for us to continue to roll out further.”
• More Video Podcasts. Video giant YouTube may dominate the space, but Netflix has signed deals for some of the top podcasters on Spotify, The Ringer and IHeartMedia. Netflix is already seeing uptake for podcasts, the company said in its Q4 investor letter. Ms. Rachel’s first season is the streamer’s ninth-most-watched show with 47 million views globally, while Mark Rober’s entertaining science-based segments for CrunchLab have attracted 12 million views. “This year, we’ll work with a broader set of creators and introduce new programming formats, like video podcasts,” Netflix said in its investor letter. “We’ve already begun to launch video podcasts from our partnerships with Spotify/TheRinger, iHeartMedia and Barstool Sports, and have just announced two new original podcasts with comedian Pete Davidson and NFL legend Michael Irvin.” Sarandos likened them to traditional talk shows, but said unlike those older formats, ”there are thousands of them.”
• More licensing. Netflix recently signed expanded licensing deals with Sony for global rights to its movies in the Pay-1 window (it previously had U.S.-only rights), and for live-action films from Universal alongside its animated shows. And there’s the deal with Paramount Skydance, which is trying to buy all of Warner Bros. Discovery in competition with Netflix. Nonetheless, Netflix will carry a sheaf of about 20 PSKY shows, internationally with titles such as Matlock and King of Queens, and in the United States with titles such as Seal Team, Watson and Mayor of Kingstown. Sarandos said the numerous licensing deals, after a drop in viewership last year for licensed programming, represents “no change in approach. We continue to license films in every available window. Our members love movies, their tastes are huge, so we want to have a wide range of movies as well.”
• More games. The ongoing experiment with videogames shifted this fall to more TV-based party games based on established franchises such as Boggle and Pictionary. But the company touted in both its investor letter and the earnings call the imminent arrival of a game based on FIFA-licensed soccer, just ahead of this summer’s World Cup in North America. The licensed mobile version of Red Dead Redemption from Rockstar Studios has proven to be a big hit, Sarandos said. Only a third of subscribers have the updated app interfaces needed to play the party games, but the company plans to expand their footprint in 2026.
• More live. The company has already done about 200 live events, including two Christmas Day NFL games and that jaw-breaking sixth-round knockout of Jake Paul by former heavyweight champ Anthony Joshua. More is coming, in more places. This spring, Netflix has Japanese rights to all 47 games of the World Baseball Classic in Tokyo, which should be massive in that country, given the international ascendancy of stars such as Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, both key cogs in the Los Angeles Dodgers two-time World Series winners. The company is also doing more in-person initiatives, including opening two Netflix Houses this past fall in Dallas and the Philadelphia area. “By nurturing these deep bonds between members and the stories they love, we believe we unlock greater value for both our audience and our business,” the investor letter says.

The array of good news and beats of Street expectations in Netflix’s earnings weren’t enough to inoculate it from investor concerns about the cost, challenges and distractions of the Warner acquisition, or its plan to halt share repurchases as it conserves cash for the acquisition, which now will be an all-cash deal after an announcement before earnings.

On a very bad day for the entire market – thanks to concerns about Donald Trump’s latest tariff threats – Netflix shares dropped a full 6 percent in after-hours trading. Shares are down a whopping 31.5 percent the past three months.