Liberty Global extends EU partnership with Netflix

Netflix and Liberty Global have extended their multi-year deal, continuing to offer 11 million video consumers in Europe easy access to the streaming service.

The announcement comes after Liberty Global’s commitment to leverage its next-generation Gigabit speed broadband networks to provide its customers with their favourite streaming content.

The deal, which was confirmed yesterday, extends the pair’s integration deal for several years, bringing Netflix originals such as The Irishman and Sex Education to Liberty Global’s subscribers.

This is alongside Liberty’s broadcast and on demand programming for primary TV screens in the home, aiming to offer customers a seamless and flexible viewer experience.

In a statement to the press, it said it “is a first mover in this space,” with its own Virgin Media in the UK the first TV and broadband provider in Europe to launch Netflix within its advanced digital television platform over seven years ago.

Virgin Media has proven the success of the partnership with approximately half of its V6 video subscribers regularly accessing Netflix content on their TV sets.

Liberty Global chief technology officer Enrique Rodriguez said: “We are excited to extend our partnership with Netflix and continue to provide the best of all worlds in content on a single, intuitive platform.”

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The firm believes that embedding the service on Liberty Global set-top boxes delivers “significantly higher net promoter and customer satisfaction scores” with Netflix available on the Horizon platform in nearly every country operated by Liberty Global.

This agreement will help drive Liberty Global’s ability to enhance functionality and overall integration of Netflix within its offering, beginning with its UK operation.

“Our customers are savvy,” Rodriguez added: “And with one voice control command, they can continue to directly access the programming they want on networks that deliver reliable, uninterrupted viewing. Netflix is a global leader in streaming content, and that’s precisely a partner we want for our customers.”

In late 2016 Liberty Global rolled out its Netflix integration to customers worldwide, including in Latin America and as a result, has since spun off its Latin American operation.

Netflix recently also extended a similar multiyear deal with Comcast’s European pay-TV giant Sky.

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