Using Netflix abroad: why is it different?

There are more than 190 countries where Netflix offers its streaming movie and television service. However, when traveling between countries, your home content may not be available. The reasons why your favorite show may not be available when you cross the border are many. In this article, we take a look at some of the reasons and how you can watch your content even abroad.

Different countries offer different shows

There is a lot of investment in every show and movie made by Hollywood studios, and production costs can vary wildly. The cost of producing and marketing major blockbusters can run into the hundreds of millions, versus only tens of thousands of dollars for independent studios. Since there is so much money involved in each film, studios are committed to enforcing copyrights as strictly as possible.

Box office sales have always been important to studios, but the way films are received after they leave the theater has changed significantly over the past decade. In the past, pirated VHS tapes were only a minor problem, as they were difficult to copy and sell. In recent years, however, studio profits have been impacted by digital piracy and the move from physical tapes to online streaming.

Amazon.com and Apple’s iTunes Store are among the outlets where studios sell their movies. Since Netflix moved from a DVD-by-mail service to a streaming service, the budget for digital content has increased and it has become a major source of revenue for studios. The value of licensed content on Netflix’s balance sheet has grown from $11.8 billion in 2017 to more than $17 billion in 2020. To meet different market demands, studios enforce copyright by country. An American hit film may seem uninteresting in Brazil, and an American comedy may not seem funny to British audiences.

Studios and Netflix understand this and charge Netflix more to stream specific titles in certain countries than others. Netflix may pay the studio’s requested price for a title in one country but not another due to country-specific deals.

Travel and Netflix

A world traveler’s access to specific content is governed by the same rules. If you travel to another country, Netflix filters what you can see to avoid conflicts with their studio partners. Depending on your location, you may be able to access that country’s Netflix library, which may differ from your home country.

US residents can watch nearly 4,000 movie titles. However, traveling to Italy for vacation only gives you access to about 2,500 titles. Using a VPN to Change Netflix region can help you solve this problem. There is no explicit prohibition in Netflix’s terms of use against subscribers using VPNs, proxy servers, or other methods to circumvent geo-restrictions.

It’s really easy to use Netflix abroad if you have the right VPN. When connecting to a VPN, your IP address will be changed to one of the countries where the server is located. From Netflix’s perspective, there is no difference between a user using a VPN to spoof their geographic location from abroad and someone who is actually in that country. Netflix determines the user’s location by their IP address, so it doesn’t matter where a user is geographically.

It comes down to

In a similar way to Netflix, which streams videos worldwide, the studios sell their content to make a profit. Netflix negotiates copyright agreements with studios for each territory in accordance with current copyright laws and agreements. Netflix now has more than 220 million subscribers worldwidewith more than 100 million of those subscribers outside the United States7.

Being able to offer content without geographic restrictions is important for attracting and retaining new subscribers. To achieve this, Netflix is ​​ramping up original content production. According to the company, it spent more than $17.3 billion on original content assets in 2020. In 2018, it spent $2.9 billion and $2.9 billion in the previous year.