ABSTRACT
Netflix began providing its video-on-demand (VoD) service in Latin America more than a decade ago, a strategic regional market in which it was deployed before its global expansion in Europe, Africa and Asia. Currently, the California-based company leads the market for over-the-top paid audiovisual services in the competitive Latin American market, ahead of giants such as Amazon, Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, Telefónica, Globo and Televisa. Based on a documentary review of primary and secondary sources, this chapter addresses the localisation strategy developed by Netflix in its first decade of implementation in Latin American countries, which has included the opening of subsidiaries in the region’s main audiovisual markets (Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina) and the production of its own content in partnership with local companies in order to feed the segment of titles labelled ‘originals’. To this end, the different fronts of action (agreements with other companies, characteristics of the content offer, in-house production of content, etc.) in which the transnational company has played a leading role are addressed. This chapter pays special attention to the Mexican and Brazilian markets in terms of in-house content production and to the debates surrounding the regulation of the VoD services market.
