Rumours began circulating Tuesday that popular streaming service Netflix is making its way to the Holy Land. According to reports published by both Haaretz and Israeli business daily Calcalist, the world’s largest provider of streaming video – featuring both original and non-original television and film – plans to arrive in Israel sometime in 2016.
Last year, Netflix announced that it was planning on expanding to 150 countries in addition to the fifty it currently operates in. Haaretz reports that the company also recently turned down offers from Israeli cable services Yes and Hot to buy its original content like House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and BoJack Horseman, implying that the company was looking to enter the Israeli market.
Coincidentally, the latter two are both developed by Jewish writers: Jenji Kohan (also the creator of Weeds) and newcomer Raphael Bob-Waksberg. Haaretz also asserts that head of the Israel Broadcasting Authority, Yoni Weisenthal, has received an offer to manage Netflix's Israeli operations.
Futhermore, Calcalist claims that Netflix recently ordered a survey to discover what pricing model the company should adopt in Israel. While services from both Yes and Hot cost a few hundred shekels a month, Netflix reportedly found that NIS 30-40 (roughly $10 – 13 CAD) would be fair to charge Israeli consumers.
It is worth noting, however, that Telesker, the company Calcalist claims conducted the survey, has denied carrying out any such survey, adding that they haven’t done any polling for Netflix.
The Jerusalem Post reports that Netflix did not respond to their request for comment.
