Overview of Content Accounting
Content Obligations.
Content obligations include amounts related to the acquisition, licensing and production of
content. An obligation for the production of content includes non-cancelable commitments under
creative talent and employment agreements, as well as other production related commitments. An
obligation for the acquisition and licensing of content is incurred at the time we enter into an
agreement to obtain future titles.
These obligations reflect content costs that will be amortized to the income statement in the
future once the 3 criteria for ASC 920 are met.
ESPN and Fox have similar obligations related to their sports programming commitments.
Those that are not reflected on the balance sheet do not yet meet asset recognition criteria (see
slide 9) and:
Either will never meet asset recognition criteria because cost per title is unknown or,
Cost per title is known but titles are not yet available for showing.
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