Hot on the heels of HBO’s announcement that the network is going over the top in Northern Europe, comes Netflix CEO Reed Hastings challenge for it to do the same in the U.S. Hastings posted the following comment Thursday afternoon on his Facebook page:
“Excited to see HBO join us in offering standalone streaming service in Scandinavia…what about the USA? We thought the first match-up would be in Albania.”
HBO had announced earlier Thursday that it was going to bring its programming to Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland this fall. The network will be available via pay TV subscriptions, but viewers will also be able to subscribe to a stand-alone Internet-only plan – something that HBO has long ruled out for U.S. consumers. HBO Nordic will cost less than €10 (about $ 12.50).
This will mark the first time HBO and Netflix squarely compete for the same customers on the Internet: Netflix had announced earlier this month that it was going to bring its service to Scandinavia before the end of the year.
