Netflix spent years telling Wall Street it was the destination. Now it wants to be the storefront, too.
Per The New York Times, Netflix executives have held talks with NBCUniversal and Fox Corporation about making Peacock and Fox One available inside Netflix’s own service.
Three people familiar with the discussions confirmed them to the Times. No deal is imminent, and it isn’t settled whether Netflix would sell the subscriptions as add-ons or fold the shows and live channels into its own interface.
Either way, it’s a reversal.
Netflix has never sold or carried a rival service inside its own app, and its executives have waved off the aggregator model for years while Amazon, Roku, and YouTube built businesses on it.
The Numbers That Changed Netflix’s Mind
Per Antenna data cited by the Times, about a third of all new streaming subscriptions are now bought through a third-party platform, and that share is up roughly 60 percent over the last three years.
Amazon is the runaway leader: as of June, at least 49 million subscriptions to other services ran through Prime Video Channels.
Netflix already ran the test.
In June, it added French broadcaster TF1’s live channels and on-demand catalog to its app in France, its first integration of the kind.
Co-CEO Greg Peters called the early results very promising on July’s earnings call and said Netflix would consider similar deals where they work for the company, its members, and its partners.
Peacock and Fox One would be the first American versions. Both are sports-heavy, which is where Netflix has been spending: NFL games, WWE, boxing, and a limited MLB package.
NBCUniversal, for its part, is shopping Peacock into everyone’s app.
In July it announced a global partnership with YouTube that hands Peacock to YouTube Premium subscribers starting in early 2027. Peacock also just raised prices across all three tiers, to $8.99, $12.99, and $19.99 a month.
The Company Everyone Else Is Merging To Catch
The report lands in the middle of the Paramount-Warner Bros. fight, and it cuts straight to the argument at the center of it.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird’s case for taking California to the Supreme Court opens with the premise that Netflix dominates streaming, and that Paramount+ and HBO Max are each smaller than Netflix, Disney, and Amazon on their own.
The DOJ’s clearance ran on the same logic, describing the combined company as a more robust competitive alternative to the dominant players.
Netflix’s answer is to sell its rivals’ subscriptions on top of its own.
Worth remembering: Netflix had a deal for just the Warner Bros. studios and streaming before Paramount outbid it in February. It lost that bidding war and is still the one setting the terms.
Meanwhile, the deal that would combine Paramount+ and HBO Max isn’t going anywhere soon. Bonta canceled the settlement talks on August 23, Ellison’s October 1 deadline and the $7 million a day ticking fees are five weeks out, and the trial isn’t until March 2.
