Netflix lately seems keener than ever to compete with YouTube—and it just snapped up a deal with one of the platform’s biggest content groups.
The Sidemen have signed the second U.K.-based season of their Big Brother-style influencer reality show, Inside, over to Netflix. The streaming service has also commissioned the first season of a U.S.-based version of Inside, the BBC reports. Both those seasons will air only on Netflix—not on YouTube.
The first season of Inside debuted on the Sidemen’s YouTube channel this past June, and its premiere episode (introducing the 10 influencer contestants competing for a £1 million prize) racked up over 14 million views. The Sidemen’s channel as a whole brings in nearly 80 million views a month, and has just over 21 million subscribers.
But that’s not enough for the Sidemen. Member Vik Barn told the BBC the seven-man group has hit “the ceiling with YouTube.”
“[N]ow we’re thinking about how to connect with different people,” he said. He added that the group was initially hesitant to do a deal with Netflix because “we’re all very particular about the way we work.”
“We also move at a really fast pace—sometimes we shoot on Wednesday and by Sunday we will have uploaded a two-hour video,” Barn said. “So we wanted to make sure Netflix were happy with the fast turnarounds and us being very dynamic.”
This is something we’ve heard before—how the immediacy of being able to film, edit, and upload a video to YouTube within days or even hours, all on their own schedule and with them in full control of the publication timeframe, can make creators reluctant to work with bigger production entities. They don’t want their upload schedules slowed—so if they’re going to make the sacrifice of putting their production on a streaming service’s schedule, they’d better get something in return.
Whether Netflix can offer the kind of returns the Sidemen might be looking for remains to be seen. The group previously worked with Netflix to release their documentary The Sidemen Story, but on premiere day, fans were disappointed to find out the docu was only airing in the U.K., not to subscribers worldwide. Netflix, as you’ve probably heard, also was the exclusive viewing platform for Jake Paul‘s recent fight with Mike Tyson, but the bout’s livestream was riddled with widespread lag problems, preventing many viewers from being able to actually watch the fight in real-time.
YouTube is, of course, not exempt from lag problems, and the Sidemen have seemingly addressed the region-lock issue (at least, for some fans), since their deal with Netflix includes a U.S. version of Inside.
“YouTube opened so many doors for us so we can’t diminish its power and it’s still unrivaled in some ways,” Barn said. “But working with Netflix is a cool opportunity for us to reach a new audience.”
Netflix hasn’t yet announced projected release dates for the new Inside installments. But for those who want to pregame, the first season is (and will continue to be) available on the Sidemen’s YouTube channel.
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