When Netflix’s leaders gathered in Reykjavik, Iceland, for a company retreat in 2019, Brandon Riegg, the executive in charge of nonfiction programming, didn’t hold back.
The company, he told the 150 people gathered there, should stream live events. He pointed to Amazon’s sports deals with Major League Baseball and the N.F.L., and some hugely popular one-time spectacles.
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“I think we need this,” he recently recalled saying at the meeting.
Mr. Riegg’s bosses didn’t hold back, either. The company’s top three executives at the time — Reed Hastings and Ted Sarandos, its co-chief executives, and Greg Peters, the chief operating officer — interrogated him: Why spend so much money and time on programming that would account for a small percentage of total viewing? Why invest in something anathema to on-demand viewing, Netflix’s core business? What would it really add?
“Usually you get one of them, or maybe two, weighing in on these debates,” Mr. Riegg said. “I was sword-fighting with the three of these guys.”
He’s not getting that treatment anymore.
Live programming is now a major priority at the streaming giant — and Mr. Riegg, 48, sits atop the effort, making him one of the most-watched executives in the entertainment world. His growing corner of Netflix includes unscripted series, sports, documentary series, and efforts to integrate gaming technologies, which allow viewers to vote for winners of a show, into unscripted events. Together, he is helping to transform Netflix’s binge-on-your-own-time service into something more like the traditional broadcast networks, but on a global scale.