The internet in Africa literally broke when it was announced that Netflix is now available everywhere in African countries including the continent’s powerhouses – Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa and Kenya. Naturally, with Netflix becoming available in Nigeria, attention is expected to shift to a company that many people love to call Africa’s Netflix, iROKO TV and its founder, Jason Njoku. This also becomes critically necessary with the swift launch of a Netflix and Chill streaming data plan by Etisalat and the initial reactions were gloomy for iROKO TV as many Nigerians, especially bloggers, believe the launch of Netflix would lead to the demise of iROKO TV but trust Jason to have a response for cynics and prophets of doom.
In a blog post, Jason said Netflix is entirely different from iROKO.
Jason said: “What iROKO is, and has largely always been known for, is the home of Nollywood. Home and abroad. The strange thing about the mourners of iROKO is they always mention how most of our subscribers are in the West. Yup US and UK represent ~55% of our subscription base. And it’s grown (not break-neck) but steadily over the last few years, in Netflix’s back yard. Folk in the US and UK (the top 2 Netflix markets) have been happy to pay YoY for the little service we provide. Building subscription businesses are hard. Heck we are only 4 years old. So why people think we will suddenly die now they are in Nigeria is totally beyond me.”
Jason added that the fact that Netflix is a large data consuming service negatively feeds into Nigeria’s level of tech advancement since data is still comparatively costly and broadband penetration is still low in the country.
“Nigeria has consistently seen around 50% less engagement in Africa than comparable markets in Western Europe. Today streaming is just difficult. I have no doubt it will get better. But it’s not today. The ISPs have improved immensely, but of the tens of millions of internet users, 99% are mobile. Remember Nigeria is the most mobilized country in the world and the average person buys 105mb. The ISPs cater to the 0.5%,” he argued.
He concluded by declaring that Netflix being in Nigeria has zero impact on iROKO and the company’s vision for the future.
“If it’s Nollywood fanatics, you know those guys can watch 3-5 hours per day, so Irokotv is still the only place they can find most of what they are looking for. Considering we are one of the biggest actual producers of Nollywood, I don’t see that changing anytime soon. In time, we will be able to produce 200 movies a year ourselves, no shaking. And with the evident collapse of the DVD market, this only makes us stronger.”
Even though Jason is boasting of iROKO’s vast collection of movies and other content categories that would keep Nollywood fanatics renewing their iROKO subscription year-on-year, Netflix too is known for its wide array of contents. Netflix has lots of blockbuster and award winning original series including Marvel’s Daredevil and Marvel’s Jessica Jones, Narcos, Sense8, Grace and Frankie, and Marco Polo, as well as a catalog of licensed TV shows and movies.
Innovation Village has also reported that this year, Netflix is planning to release 31 new and returning original series, two dozen original feature films and documentaries, a wide range of stand-up comedy specials and 30 original kids series — available at the same time to members everywhere.
To attract users in Nigeria or iROKO subscribers across the world, all that Netflix has to do is to make top quality Nollywood contents available on its platform. You do not need rocket science to know that if Netflix wants to get Nigerian contents, it can do so with relative ease since it is rich enough to bankroll numerous Nollywood production projects.
Another issue of concern is Netflix’s potential ability to acquire any content it desires at any named price which is something that iROKO cannot really do. Producers of latest Nollywood productions may be offered much more than what iROKO is offering them to have their movies and other productions on the platform and the right may be an exclusive one. Do the investors of iROKO have sufficient money to go head-to-head with Netflix?
Even beyond money, there is this unwritten rule in Nigeria in which there is better desire for more global products and platforms than local ones – same reason why startups would prefer to talk to CNN instead of the local media. It would not be surprising to find Nollywood producers that are already queuing to have their contents on Netflix since they may be made to believe that Netflix offers bigger opportunity to go global.
The media frenzy that greeted the launch of Netflix in Nigeria and elsewhere is also something of concern. Everyone is talking about Netflix even without the platform spending a dollar on advertising yet and the Usain Bolt-speed with which Etisalat entered the market with its Netflix package showed the potentials of the service going viral in Nigeria and it may be able to do something that Jason’s iROKO has not been able to do yet – getting more Nigerians to use its service. Furthermore, Netflix is launching with everyone already aware of the fact that they have to pay a monthly fee for the service which means the Nigerian users that Jason is yet to perfectly figure out how to make them love iROKO enough to pay to watch its films may willingly jump on the Netflix train that just arrived their country.
Taking the conversation further, Jason revealed that in 2015, across iROKO’s YouTube channels, they saw 313 million streaming video views. According to him, 185 million of that was largely long form second tier Nollywood content. He revealed that Nigeria represented only 6% and the company did not make money from the country apart from the ads of course. But the fact that iROKO had over 11.1 million long-form streaming video views from Nigeria is a perfect testament to the potentials of the Nigerian market. Just imagine how much Netflix would make if it got that large number of viewers in Nigeria since its contents are not available via YouTube for free viewing like iROKO’s. I even believe that Netflix would be satisfied it is gets half of that in Nigeria.
iROKO has itself to blame for its poor monetization in Nigeria by making its contents available for free streaming via YouTube which is something Netflix did not do. Right from the beginning, Netflix launched with a subscription only service. Which means that even if it is just one million views it is getting in Nigeria, it could be making as high as $8 million monthly. This is actually not bad. Furthermore, it is not true that data is a big issue for everyone in Nigeria as there are households that already have broadband access – even those that browse through their smartphones are already getting used to the cost and are watching and downloading large files online, suggesting that the market is ripe enough for Netflix to enter.
Netflix is also doing something that is very smart, it is launching in multiple languages making its service to become available in 21 languages including French – something that iROKO is yet to do.
So why should Jason be worried?
In the short term, Jason should be worried because Netflix can make millions of dollars from a country and continent he’s been unable to crack so far while in the long term, Jason should be worried that his current subscribers wherever they may be in the world may see Netflix as the better source for Nollywood contents than iROKO. But above all, Jason should be worried because Netflix is Netflix.
