Streaming exclusivity doesn’t matter anymore

polygon.com:

In the early days of the streaming wars, library content seemed to be king. Peacock holding onto the rights of extraordinarily valuable parent-company shows like The Office looked like wins that would help the streaming service soar and felt like an existential threat to Netflix. But three years after Peacock’s launch, that’s not really how things have shaken out. In 2023, Netflix is still king of the streamers, and studios licensing out their most valuable shows and movies is starting to look like a great idea again.

Warner Bros. clearly agrees. Many have questioned the studio’s decisions since it merged with Discovery and came under the leadership of new CEO David Zaslav, but the recent choice to start selling some of its biggest movies to other streaming services makes perfect sense.

In recent weeks, several of DC’s biggest superhero movies have been added to Netflix, including The Batman and Man of Steel. Tuesday, the company announced many DC movies, including The Batman and Black Adam, are coming to Fox’s free ad-supported streamer Tubi. In the medieval days of the streaming wars, this would have been seen as inviting the enemy on top of your walls and across your drawbridge. But now companies are starting to see things differently. They’re coming around to what’s always been true: Selling content is way more valuable than hoarding it.

The true winner of the streaming wars wasn’t Netflix, or Warner Bros., or Apple, or even Disney. That would be Sony, the one company that never came close to launching its own streaming platform. Instead, Sony kept licensing IP like the The Last of Us and releasing titles like Uncharted and No Hard Feelings, all the while selling them at a premium to streaming services desperate