u/jiggabot

I posted this on Instagram, but felt compelled to share it here because I see a ton of misleading posts about it.

There's a good chance you've seen a bunch of posts this week about how Netflix is "officially" dumping Seinfeld. The current deal for Seinfeld to be streaming on Netflix runs through September. Netflix and Sony are likely negotiating and they may renew the deal or they may not. Nobody knows and there hasn't actually been any recent news on this, despite all the posts online about it in the last few days.

So, why are you suddenly seeing this everywhere? As far as I can tell: on Monday, one guy on Reddit pointed out in a post how the current deal Netflix has for Seinfeld is set to expire in a couple months. This has been public information for years and there have been no recent developments. However, this post caught some attention and led to a flood of social media accounts repeating this info, often with flashy headline-style posts that used words like "it's official" or "breaking news" that implies there has been some update.

Netflix may renew the deal or they may not. It could easily go either way. Netflix paid over $500 million (!) for the show over 5 years. When that deal was struck in 2019, streaming services were spending money like crazy to get the rights to legacy shows like Seinfeld as a way to establish themselves. There were multiple old sitcoms that sold their streaming rights for over $400 million, with Seinfeld's supposedly being the highest. It seems like that gold rush is over and most streaming platforms are less willing to spend money on older shows. It would make sense if Netflix doesn't want to spend the same money it did last time.

In the data Netflix publishes, Seinfeld has never actually been in the weekly Top 10 most global watched shows on the service. On the other hand, Seinfeld viewership has still been consistent and appears to have had at least 400 million watch hours for each year on the platform. That consistency is what makes the show valuable. When Stranger Things drops a new season, it has a huge spike in viewership for a few weeks before tapering off. Fans may even just unsubscribe after they complete it. But Seinfeld viewers will binge and rewatch the show endlessly. Netflix bought the show because of this. Reliable shows like that keep customers and prevent "subscription churn." Part of the reason Netflix picked up the Seinfeld rights was because they lost the rights to Friends and The Office, shows with similar viewership patterns.

It may feel a little odd how there hasn't been news on a new deal for Seinfeld yet. The current deal with Netflix was announced two years in advance and we're about 4 months out from the end of that deal without any updates. However, it's not uncommon for Netflix to renew the rights to big shows shortly before their current deal ends. In 2023, Arrested Development was set to leave the platform, but a last minute deal kept it on for longer. In 2025, they renewed the rights to Breaking Bad just a week before they were set to expire. So, the lack of news on a renewal isn't really proof it's leaving.

Regardless, I find some of these social media posts a little annoying. There is literally nothing that happened in the past couple days that wasn't well known years ago, but people are acting like this is breaking news. Unfortunately, I think a lot of social media accounts see someone else's post do well and just repost the same exact thing without looking into it. Or they deliberately make the info sound definitive and offical to get more engagement. This creates a feedback loop, because when you see multiple posts stating this news, you just assume there's something official.

What's even crazier is that tons of seemingly reputable news sources started publishing stories about this in the past couple days, including Yahoo and Men's Journal. This isn't news! Nothing happened! Unfortunately, many news orgs have resorted to just churning out low-information blog posts that they think will do well on social media.

Whatever happens, I am sure Seinfeld will continue to be available on some streaming service. Even if it left Netflix, I imagine the new service would try to have it up immediately on October 1stor as soon as possible. For the physical media collectors, Seinfeld did get a recent 4K Bluray release if you'd rather just own it and avoid streaming services altogether. Of course, there's the DVD box sets that came out ages ago and are pretty cheap to pick up used these days.

I posted this on my Instagram here, but figured i would share it here. I have a lot more great Seinfeld stuff for those interested.

I also have another Instagram post that goes into all the nitty gritty details about how the map was made. For those interested, that's here.