SEOUL, Jan 2 — Netflix is setting the record straight on reports suggesting Squid Game Season 2 will rake in US$1 billion (RM4.48 billion) in revenue.
The streaming giant firmly denied these claims in a statement to The Korea Times, pointing out that revenue generation isn’t calculated the way some have assumed.
According to The Korea Times, K EnterTech Hub, a South Korean media research group, made the bold prediction, based on its analysis of both the first and second seasons of the survival drama.
Their numbers were grounded in the massive success of Squid Game’s debut season, which cost around 25 billion won to produce and generated roughly 1 trillion won in revenue — a hefty return of 40 times its production budget.
Given that the second season’s production budget has ballooned to around 100 billion won, the research group projected that the new season could easily pull in at least 1.5 trillion won, following the same trajectory.
But Netflix wasn’t having any of it.
In a statement yesterday, the streaming service explained that their revenue model doesn’t allow for projections based on a single show’s performance.
“As a monthly subscription service, Netflix cannot generate additional revenue based on the number of views or viewing time of individual works,” the company said to The Korea Times.
“There is no official information that allows for the estimation of monetary revenue from individual works. Netflix does not evaluate the performance of works in this way, nor can we do so.”
Netflix went on to clarify that such revenue estimates are more in line with traditional box office or pay-per-view models, not a subscription-based service like theirs.
“We express concern about the spread of inaccurate information due to incorrect analyses or claims that could cause significant misunderstandings about this business structure,” the company added.
Still, there’s no denying Squid Game Season 2’s success. In just two days of its December 26 premiere, the series claimed the top spot in 93 countries and shattered viewership records in its first week.
