Netflix's Growth Pace Isn't Meeting Ted Sarandos' Ambitions
By Devanshi Basu
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos admitted the streamer’s growth isn’t moving fast enough for his liking. Speaking at Bloomberg’s 2026 Screentime event, he revealed that Netflix viewership grew just 2 percent over the first half of 2026, a pace that falls short of his expectations for the company.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos outlines why he wants faster growth from the streaming giant
“Overall, we’re not growing as fast as I want us to, and we’re working on making that move faster,” Sarandos said. The unexpected assessment comes as Netflix experiments with new formats to reignite engagement. Live programming, including high-profile NFL games, has emerged as one potential lever. Yet the numbers remain modest:
- Netflix devotes roughly 5 percent of its $20 billion annual content budget to live programming, which generates only about 1 percent of viewership. Sarandos conceded the return on investment isn’t “eye-popping.”
- However, he stressed that live events excel at driving “a lot of signups,” reducing subscriber churn, and pleasing advertisers.
- “The business is great and growing fine,” Sarandos added, softening his earlier tone.
A larger question hangs over Netflix’s ambitions: the looming $111 billion combination of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, which received judicial approval earlier on Wednesday.
Asked whether he regrets Netflix’s brief winning bid for Warner Bros., Sarandos offered a blunt “Nahhh.”
“I think the plan was solid,” he said. “We won the deal at some point, so we think we priced it right—at our scale.” Sarandos remains uncertain about the merger’s competitive impact.
“It looks on paper—so far it’s one and one,” he said of streaming-market share. “So I don’t know if one and one is two, or one and one is one and a half, or one and one is three.”
Despite recent deals with YouTube creators, Sarandos insisted Netflix isn’t pivoting toward user-generated content.
“We’re definitely… not in the UGC business,” he quipped. “We’re in the professionally produced content business” (via The Hollywood Reporter).
Devanshi Basu
Devanshi Basu is an Entertainment and Pop Culture Writer at Evolve Media with six years of experience in news and digital publishing. Her expertise spans pop culture and political coverage, with a strong ability to translate them into engaging, reader-focused content. At Evolve Media, she has written news and feature pieces, and managed cross-platform content rollouts tailored to diverse audiences. She brings a sharp understanding of the evolving media landscape to her work, combining research and storytelling to create content that is both relevant and compelling.