Ligue 1 and chill
Netflix is using French league's players as influencers to promote its contents
March 20th, 2017
In these days, the investments of the big companies - like Netflix - are always more frequently led by social networks. Those tools, capable of reaching a massive number of people, especially young people, are getting more and more interest in terms of marketing, even in the world of sport. Footballers, as famous people with a great number of followers, are very requested influencers.
Netflix, a streaming platform for movies and tv series, arrived in Italy about a year ago, knows something about it. The American colossus, which has almost 100 million users all around the world, started to get interested in the market of football, even if not in the terms we are used to. Reed Hastings and March Randolph’s company, in fact, already stated to be uninterested (for now, we say) in buying the tv right for football, because “they’re already covered by traditional television and they’re too expensive".
This couldn't prevent the streaming colossus to reach some agreement with several Ligue 1’s stars, like Pastore, Balotelli, Lucas Moura, Edinson Cavani and others, for the sharing of some Netflix-related posts on social networks. A very simple form of influence, and yet very effective, as the engagement produced by those posts confirms. Undoubtedly, footballers are a great vehicle of promotion for the Californian company, especially for their impact on youngest people.
Right now, Netflix just included players from the French league - many of them already posting contents without a deal with Netflix - but it’s likely that in the future they will look at other leagues, where footballers have an even bigger influence. Maybe, in the future, the streaming platform will reconsider its position about buying football tv rights. After all, we’re talking about a 8 billion income company.