‘Seinfeld’ News: Entire Series of Popular ‘90s Show to Stream Exclusively on Hulu
Hulu executives and investors are celebrating the landmark deal that will put exclusive streaming rights for the popular "Seinfeld" series on the streaming buffet platform.
But it wasn't easy to secure the rights to this massively popular show from the '90s, which left viewers wondering the awkward fate of our favorite characters as the camera zoomed away from them while they sat in a jail cell.
This show, which is the self-proclaimed "show about nothing," has been shopped around by Sony TV, the company controlling the distribution rights, for a few months now, according to Variety. The series is supposed to be available to Hulu subscribers come June, and the deal is believed to be for five years.
This news indicates a big break in the streaming video-on-demand market, which has been steadily getting bigger and bigger every year.
New York Post reports that this deal was secured after a bidding war, which was mostly competed by with Amazon and Yahoo, ended in Hulu paying $700,000 per episode for the series entire library of 180 shows. That comes in at a roughly $126 million dollars.
But that is nothing compared to the revenue Hulu could pick up from subscribers over the months and years to come. Hulu is a venture co-owned by Walt Disney Co., 21st Century Fox Inc. and Comcast Corp.
News of this landmark deal came on the heels of rival video-buffet service Netflix's acquisition of the entire "Friends" catalogue last year for exclusive streaming rights. That deal, which was struck with Warner Bros., is yet another mega-hit NBC comedy that spun the '90s and early 2000s into uncontrollable laughter and gigantic ratings for the network.
Hulu's other major competitor in the video buffet market is Amazon, who had previously struck a deal with HBO for exclusive streaming rights to its hit shows. But they will also be backed into a corner once subscribers for HBO's Internet-only service starts taking off.