Seinfeld is one of the most popular sitcoms of all time, constantly airing reruns on TV. Naturally the rights to stream the show would be hugely valuable, and Sony is currently making a deal with one of the Internet's big streaming platforms for the rights to the show.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Sony is in talks to bring Seinfeld to streaming, and they are expected to wrap up a deal very soon.
The rights to the show will apparently cost over $500,000 an episode. The series contains 180 episodes, so that would be somewhere between $90 and $100 million.
Netflix has apparently passed on the show, possibly because they just purchased the rights to stream Friends for more than $500,000 an episode. That would probably leave the rights to either Hulu or Amazon, and that could be pretty huge for either of them. Amazon made a deal with HBO last year to stream many of their hit shows, but given how popular and rewatchable Seinfeld is, this could be almost as big as that. As for Hulu, they don't really have a whole lot of exclusive shows in their entirety, and certainly not any as popular as Seinfeld.
The length of the deal is pretty significant here. Netflix's contract for Friends is only for four years, and according to the Wall Street Journal, buyers don't want to pay such a hefty price for Seinfeld if the rights are for less than 10 years.
The Wall Street Journal also notes that the move to streaming would not mean Seinfeld will stop airing in reruns, as Friends still plays quite often on TBS with pretty consistently good ratings despite being available on Netflix.
These days, streaming is just as huge of a market of some of TV's biggest networks, and so having the rights to a show that so many people will want to watch and sign up for is pretty important for these outlets. According to Time, Seinfeld has grossed $2.7 billion in revenue in syndication, which shows just how massively powerful this show still is nearly two decades after going off the air.
image courtesy of Roger Wong/INFphoto.com