The ‘troublemaker’ behind Netflix’s biggest gamble
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 5 hours ago
- 6 min read
By Nicole Sperling
When Netflix’s leaders gathered in Reykjavik, Iceland, for a company retreat in 2019, Brandon Riegg, the executive in charge of nonfiction programming, didn’t hold back.
The company, he told the 150 people gathered there, should stream live events. He pointed to Amazon’s sports deals with Major League Baseball and the NFL, and some hugely popular one-time spectacles.
“I think we need this,” he recently recalled saying at the meeting.
Riegg’s bosses didn’t hold back, either. The company’s top three executives at the time — Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos, its co-chief executives, and Greg Peters, the chief operating officer — interrogated him: Why spend so much money and time on programming that would account for a small percentage of total viewing? Why invest in something anathema to on-demand viewing, Netflix’s core business? What would it really add?
“Usually you get one of them, or maybe two, weighing in on these debates,” Riegg said. “I was sword-fighting with the three of these guys.”
He’s not getting that treatment anymore.
Live programming is now a major priority at the streaming giant — and Riegg, 48, sits atop the effort, making him one of the most-watched executives in the entertainment world. His growing corner of Netflix includes unscripted series, sports, documentary series, and efforts to integrate gaming technologies, which allow viewers to vote for winners of a show, into unscripted events. Together, he is helping to transform Netflix’s binge-on-your-own-time service into something more like the traditional broadcast networks, but on a global scale.
The audience for Netflix’s live boxing match last year between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson peaked at 38 million concurrent streams in the United States, making it the country’s most-watched sporting event of 2024 after the Super Bowl. The company aired two NFL games on Christmas Day, both watched by millions of people, and will again this year. It has also paid $5 billion for a decade of rights to weekly WWE shows.
And there is much more to come. In September, Netflix will broadcast a fight between Canelo Álvarez and Terence Crawford; it will premiere a live version of “Star Search” in January, where viewers will be able to vote in real time; and has secured the U.S. rights to FIFA’s Women’s World Cup for 2027.
“Brandon has been a troublemaker his whole time at Netflix,” Hastings, now the company’s chair, said in an email. “He was years ago trying to get us into live and into fights. As he nailed unscripted, I could no longer hold back his ambition for us. And darn him, he has been wildly successful. He was right; I was wrong. I love him for it.”
But Riegg’s strategy still comes with big risks, firmly inserting the streaming giant into the cutthroat, competitive world of sports rights.
Those spectacles can produce outsize results: It is the one type of programming where subscribers will tolerate commercials, producing millions in advertising revenue. But sports rights are hugely expensive — and the company hasn’t fully overcome the technical issues required to seamlessly stream live shows to its 300 million subscribers around the world.
Some of these issues swirled in Riegg’s brain on a recent Friday, in the hours before the latest Netflix boxing match, a second rematch between Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano.
The fight didn’t have the prefight buzz that came with the Tyson-Paul match, though many fans were hoping Serrano could pull off an upset after losing twice to Taylor. But it was the first time an all-female fight card had been presented to Netflix audiences live around the world.
Riegg approached the on-air analysts, Laila Ali and Kate Scott, inside Madison Square Garden as they ran through a final rehearsal. “Like I said at the weigh-in, this is just the beginning,” said Ali, referring to the magnitude of this event for the female boxing community. “I almost want Amanda to win once, you know what I mean.”
Riegg knew exactly what she meant. Like other top entertainment executives, he understands that good television is all about good storytelling. A win for Serrano would mean the underdog had triumphed, and the crowd would be ecstatic.
Hollywood beckons
After graduating from University of Pennsylvania, Riegg moved to Los Angeles with hopes of working in feature films. Yet his resume reads more as a timeline tracking the proliferation of reality programming.
He worked with Mark Burnett, the producer of “Survivor,” on a show called “Boarding House: North Shore.” He then moved to VH1, finding success with the celebrity reality shows “Breaking Bonaduce” and “The Surreal Life.”
“These were not the shows my parents were bragging to their friends about,” he said. Yet he credits those shows, “Bonaduce” specifically, with elevating his name around the industry. “It was pretty groundbreaking at the time,” he said. “No one had ever done an unvarnished, unfiltered follow doc about a celebrity before.”
Riegg then moved over to ABC, where he was responsible for “Dancing With the Stars” and “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” In 2010, he jumped to NBC, overseeing “Biggest Loser,” “American Ninja Warrior” and “America’s Got Talent.” He spent his summers in New York during Howard Stern’s time on the talent competition show, serving as the shock jock’s main point of contact with the network.
“He showed great success at dealing with talent, and I think that’s when he got the confidence,” said Alan Braun, the head of unscripted television at Creative Artists Agency. “That was a big job for him because that is such an important franchise at NBC.”
Bela Bajaria, then the vice president of content for Netflix and now its chief content officer, hired him in 2016, when the streaming giant was just dipping its toe into unscripted content. Riegg was given pretty much free rein.
“It was like I showed up at the Netflix mansion and Ted walked me down the hallway, opened a door into a totally empty room and said, ‘Here you go,’” Riegg said, referring to Sarandos. “That is exhilarating to hear, but also terrifying.”
Lightning in a bottle?
At Netflix, the first show Riegg released was a reboot of “Queer Eye,” now completing its 10th and final season. He also debuted two successful cooking shows: “Nailed It” and “Sugar Rush,” proving that a variety of unscripted content can succeed on the service.
“They all blew way past any projection of what any unscripted show could do,” he said.
But the biggest gamble he ever took, he said, was starting a reality show spinoff of the South Korean drama “Squid Game,” a global phenomenon and the company’s most popular series ever. No entertainment company had successfully created a reality show based on one of its scripted shows. If his show failed, it could mar one of Netflix’s crown jewels. But if he got it right, the show could possibly open up a new world of reality programming.
“This is either going to destroy both our careers or it’s going to be a huge success,” Stephen Lambert, the producer of the reality show, “Squid Game: The Challenge,” recalled Riegg telling him.
The show wound up costing $40 million, one of the most expensive reality television shows ever. But viewers showed up in droves to watch 456 contestants play for $4.56 million. And it generated renewed interest in the scripted “Squid Game” before its next season.
Season 2 of the competition series will debut in November, and a third season has already been ordered. Netflix will try to replicate that success with two upcoming shows: “Monopoly,” and “Willy Wonka: The Golden Ticket.”
“I don’t know if we got lightning in a bottle, or if we actually cracked a little bit of the code,” Riegg said. “Time will tell.”
Avoiding a ‘Westside’
A common refrain inside Netflix is, “If you’re not failing, you’re not trying.” Riegg’s biggest failure in his nine-year tenure, the show “Westside,” has become something of an urban legend within the company.
The show, released in 2018, tracked the lives of nine struggling musicians in Los Angeles. Riegg describes it as “The Hills” meets “Cop Rock,” with contestants breaking into song when their emotions overtake them.
The show attracted so few viewers that Riegg initially thought it wasn’t appearing on the service. He spent hours on the phone with the product team questioning the company’s technology. That wasn’t the problem.
Hastings sent Riegg and his team the meager viewership figures with a note that simply read, “Ouch!”
Today the show’s name is shorthand for a flop. Riegg said Sarandos, the company’s co-chief executive, often quips: “At least it’s not a ‘Westside.’ ”
No one thinks that Riegg’s deals for live programming will result in another “Westside.” But the stakes, and dollars involved, are much higher — particularly as the company weighs how deeply to invest in sports rights. Riegg insists it is a necessary risk for Netflix to add a robust new aspect to its programming with spectacles that bring viewers together en masse.