As part of a wide-ranging licensing deal between Disney and Netflix, a handful of episodes of ESPN’s 30 for 30 docuseries are heading to Netflix.
Per Deadline, 14 different Disney series will be non-exclusively licensed to Netflix for 18 months, with Netflix also sharing the streaming rights to Grey’s Anatomy with Hulu. One of those is ESPN’s 30 for 30 docuseries, but the full lineup isn’t heading to Netflix. Instead, just 25 of the over 100 editions of 30 for 30 will be making the leap.
They also won’t be heading over at once. Deadline’s report states that the premiere dates for 30 for 30 on Netflix range from February to December. The 25 episodes that will be available on Netflix haven’t been announced.
Netflix previously held the exclusive rights to The Last Dance, the ten-episode ESPN docuseries not under the 30 for 30 umbrella, for a full year following its debut. The series is now available on both Netflix and ESPN+.
Here’s the full list of shows Disney is licensing to Netflix and the premiere dates, again per Deadline.
- The Wonder Years: 1/1/2024
- This is Us: 1/8/2024
- My Wife & Kids: 2/5/2024
- ESPN 30 for 30: 25 episodes; premiere dates vary between from February to December
- The Resident: 3/4/2024
- White Collar: 4/1/2024
- Reba: 5/6/2024
- Archer: 5/13/2024
- How I Met You Mother: 6/3/2024
- Lost: 7/1/2024
- Prison Break: 7/29/2024
- The Hughleys: 9/2/2024 (also coming to Hulu)
- The Bernie Mac Show: 1/1/2025
- Home Improvement: 2/1/2025
More content could be licensed to Netflix in the future, but Disney CEO Bob Iger outlined what content is off the table in Disney’s Q4 earnings call.
“Those are obviously competitive advantages for us and differentiators,” he said. “Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars for instance, they are all doing very, very well on our platform and I don’t see why, just to basically chase bucks, we should do that when they are really really important building blocks to the current and future of our streaming business.”
While it was a key part of ESPN+ when it launched, licensing out part of the 30 for 30 library does make some sense. After all, the oldest episodes are almost 15 years old, and nearly half of the library is more than a decade old. If Disney can leverage part of that library into creating a better position for its streaming platforms and gaining other content in return, it seems like a sensible decision on its part.
[Deadline]
