Netflix is putting its DVD rental service to rest, yet it appears that Redbox's parent company believes that the business should remain operational, and it has offered to purchase the streaming giant's business.
Netflix Says No
Redbox's parent company has always been interested in acquiring Netflix's DVD rental service. However, the steaming streaming service has already declined the offer many times. CEO of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Bill Rouhana proposed the purchase three or four times.
Rouhana is the owner of Redbox after acquiring it last year for $370 million, as mentioned in The Verge. He stated that he wished Netflix would sell him the business instead of just shutting it down. Despite that, Netflix appears to have no plans to sell its business.
Netflix has ample time to change their minds. The company announced that it will send its last DVD by September 29, so that's more than five months where Redbox can make another offer if it really wants to acquire the DVD rental business.
Rouhana said that it could be a great boon to them because there are a lot of people who are going to look for a new place to purchase or rent DVDs and that they are close to 90% of them when it comes to the location of their kiosks.
Many Redbox kiosks can be found in various places such as Walgreens, Redbox, CVS, Walmart, and Dolar General. Although DVDs are slowly becoming a thing of the past, Rouhana believes that "like most legacy things, it's a lot harder to kill than people say."
In the eyes of the public, purchasing Netflix's DVD business might come as a bad idea since people are turning to streaming services now, which is also why Netflix is shutting its DVD business down in the first place.
Netflix DVD Service to Shut Down
The streaming giant has announced the wind-down of its DVD-by-mail service after being operational for 25 years. The rental business helped Netflix establish its name as a streaming service, and now watching online has become the norm because of its convenience.
The DVD business has done a lot for Netflix. In fact, it was then that the company's first original programming was produced such as "Sherrybaby" and Purple Onion." The service had 40 million unique subscribers in its 25 years.
The DVD business reached its peak in 2017, with that year's revenue reaching $450 million. Since then, the rental business has been in a steady decline, earning just a little over $200 million by 2021, which is less than half of the 2017 revenue, as mentioned in Comparitech.
Netflix decided to shut it down before it shares the same fate as the once-giant Blockbuster. Overall, the service shipped more than 5.2 billion DVDs, wherein people had 20 main genres as well as 530 more subgenres to choose from.
Co-CEO of Netflix, Ted Sarandos expressed his gratitude to everyone who "waited by the mailbox for a red envelope to arrive." The winding down of the DVD business will give Netflix more time to focus on creating more content in the streaming service.
