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Netflix & Mastercard's Immersive Experience Partnership

Netflix & Mastercard’s Immersive Experience Partnership

Blog

December 18, 2024

Netflix has partnered with Mastercard to offer cardholders exclusive perks and access to its immersive live experiences – with shows like Stranger Things, Bridgerton, Outer Banks and more all transcending the screen to become live entertainment experiences for their fans to engage with.

Why You should Care

Netflix has approx. 247 million global subscribers, and Mastercard an estimated 2.9 billion cardholders globally – so the scale to this partnership is truly huge.

So What Is The Partnership Aiming To Do?

Both Mastercard & Netflix believe there is a generational shift taking place, where the audience would rather put their money towards spending on experiences than anything else – with a Mastercard study finding that “60% of people are actively saving to indulge in the experiences that fuel their passions.”

For those of you who joined us @ SEG3 London in June, this perhaps won’t be a revelation as we were lucky enough that Kerry Elsdon, Mastercard’s SVP Global Brand Strategy & Innovation, spoke to the brands partnership strategy and their focus on providing priceless experiences for their customers around their passion points (with some really interesting initiatives leveraging emerging tech like Artist Accelerator, The Gamer Academy, Pass to Priceless etc).

With sports, entertainment & games being able to evoke passion like no other, our industries sit high on the list of where people want to spend their time and money – so it’s important for brands like Mastercard that have built a narrative around experiences to have access for their customers to something like Netflix’s IRL experiences.

So what are these IRL experiences Netflix are committing to, and why?

Well, according to Co-CEO Ted Sarandos, the initial Netflix House locations are “meant to mostly be a learning experience”, but with the plan to have “50 or 60 of these around the world”, it’s a fairly large commitment to experiential.

Time will tell how the experiences will help to grow Netflix’s franchises and fanbase – but my feeling is the success will lie in the design.

Can they be designed to meet the needs of the superfans, who want to fully immerse themselves further into the franchise, whilst also being able to cater to the audience who are just intrigued by the entertainment factor of attending an immersive experience and successfully drive them to watching the show & film?

This would be the dream scenario, but history says finding the perfect balance between hardcore fans and casual consumers is incredibly hard to achieve given you’re managing very different expectations.

On the whole, this partnership feels like a great fit. It allows Mastercard to continue delivering value to their cardholders through access to unforgettable experiences from Netflix, whilst Netflix gets access to a sizeable audience that is already well versed in Mastercard being their conduit to get access to their favourite passion points.

In any case, it’s a really interesting approach to location based entertainment that could well help Netflix to replicate the connection they have on-screen with their audience off of it.

SOURCE: The SEG3 Report

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