To Russia with Love: Russia may be the next country to receive Netflix

By Parker Hall January 4, 2016

netflix support behind the screens 110815 — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Streaming video giant Netlfix will launch its service in Russia this January, according to an article in Russian language newspaper Izvestia.

“We hope that there will be more licensed content in Russia, and with the advent of Netflix people will start to get used to the consumer subscription model,” said Vitaliy Svistunov, a smart TV manager for South Korea’s LG Electronics, in the report.

The news comes as part of the company’s planned global rollout in 2016, with Netflix having previously announced launches in several Asian countries, including South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, to come this year. The company already operates in over 40 countries around the globe, with more than 43 million subscribers in the United States, and 69 million worldwide as of October 2015.

Besides Russia, India is another big-market country that has been unofficially rumored to be getting access to Netflix sometime before the end of the year.

Typically, the company’s rollout has occurred in stages, as its workers facilitate access to licensed video content with groups of nations at a time. In Europe, the firm opened in Ireland, the U.K., and Nordic nations in 2012, The Netherlands in 2013, and Belgium, Austria, Germany, France, Switzerland and Luxembourg in 2014. Last year, access became available in Spain, Italy, and Portugal. This year, it appears, the big push is in Asia.

The company has yet to confirm whether or not 2016 will be the year that Russians can binge-watch Narcos and House of Cards, but Joris Evers, the company’s head of communications for Europe, has also not said the opposite.

“We aim to largely complete our global expansion by the end of this year,” he said in an interview with Variety regarding the news.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings will give the keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this coming Wednesday.

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Parker Hall is a writer and musician from Portland, OR. He is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Oberlin…

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