Wall Street is a notoriously tough place, even for successful companies, but Netflix is now basking in the glow of what industry analysts are calling a “near flawless” quarter. That, in turn, has set up even bigger expectations for 2025 that will feature a heightened presence by the company in live sports. 

The streaming giant on Wednesday enjoyed more plaudits from a particularly robust quarterly report the day before that included better-than-expected subscriber growth to 301.6 million globally and hefty increases in both revenue and net income. Investors responded enthusiastically, sending up shares in Netflix early Wednesday by more than 15% to a new company high of nearly $1,000 per share. The stock later retreated somewhat, but still finished the day up by nearly 10% to a record close of $953.99 per share. 

Wall Street is continually on the hunt for aggressive growth, and hopeful prospects for the future. With an industry-leading subscriber count and an expanding business model based more on live events, Netflix is delivering that—and then some. 

“Our view remains unchanged that Netflix has won the global streaming race,” Jeffrey Wlodarczak, media analyst with Pivotal Research Group, wrote in a note to investors. “This is what, in our opinion, winning looks like.” 

Sports Role

A key element in that accelerating growth, of course, is Netflix’s increasing presence in live sports that now includes the NFL, boxing, WWE’s Raw, and beginning in 2027, the FIFA Women’s World Cup. 

Still, company executives were quick to reiterate in a call with analysts late Tuesday that they will continue to resist pursuing full-season sports rights, preferring instead to continue on its big-event strategy. 

“We are constantly trying to broaden our programming. Live events [are] one of those things, and sports is part of those live events,” said Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos. “That’s a really fantastic thing, but it doesn’t really change the underlying economics of full-season, big-league sports being extremely challenging.

“If there was a path where we could actually make the economics work, for both us and the leagues, we would certainly explore [it]. But right now, we believe that the live events business is where we really want to be,” Sarandos said. 

New Pricing

Perhaps the biggest threat to Netflix is consumer pushback to a set of price increases also introduced late Tuesday. 

Mirroring price hikes seen at many other places in the streaming business, the new structure will introduce increases of $1 to $2.50 per month. Plans will now range from $7.99 for the lowest, ad-supported tier to $24.99 per month for the highest, premium-level tier. The latter figure is more than twice as high as what that tier cost in 2013. 

Netflix, however, insisted its programming will be able to withstand any resistance to that new pricing. 

“When you’re going to ask for a price increase, you better make sure you have the goods and engagement to back it up, and I feel like what we have going into 2025 is just that,” Sarandos said. 

The Baseball Hall of Fame knows this summer is going to be big for the shrine. Just how big, however, remains an open question. 

The Cooperstown, N.Y.–based entity is looking at a banner 2025 induction class led by Ichiro Suzuki, the first Japanese player to be elected to the Hall, and also including CC Sabathia, Billy Wagner, Dick Allen, and Dave Parker. Others, including MLB Network’s Jon Paul Morosi, predicted this would be “the biggest crowd to ever attend an induction ceremony,” beating the estimated 82,000 in 2007 for a class led by Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn. Hall executives, however, stopped short of confirming those expectations for the July 27 event. 

“We know it’s going to be a large induction, but we won’t have a full grasp on this until we understand more about what’s happening with hotel reservations, bus tours, and the like,” Hall of Fame president Josh Rawitch tells Front Office Sports. “It’s also not just Ichiro. This is a large group of popular players being inducted, with ties to more than half the teams in MLB, and many that played in nearby places like New York, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh.”

Still, the presence of Suzuki in this class presents a unique element. The Hall of Fame is already welcoming a group of Japanese media this week who traveled to Cooperstown for the election results from the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. The institution is also working on potential partnerships, supplementing its long-standing relationship with official travel partner Sports Travel and Tours, to aid Japanese fans coming over this summer for the induction ceremony. 

The Hall of Fame also has developed a new museum exhibit opening this summer, roughly coinciding with the induction ceremony, on the cultural relationship between Japan and the U.S. through baseball. “Yakyu | Baseball: The Transpacific Exchange of the Game” will explore a history of baseball involving the two countries spanning more than 150 years, and it will include several artifacts from Suzuki. 

Voting Matters

Suzuki, meanwhile, fell one vote short of becoming just the second player, following Mariano Rivera in 2019, to be elected unanimously by the BBWAA. Derek Jeter also fell one vote short in 2020, and five years later, the identity of that voter has not been fully confirmed. 

Similarly, it may never become known who didn’t vote for Suzuki—in part the result of current Hall of Fame rules that allow, but do not mandate, voters to reveal their choices publicly. The Hall of Fame has previously resisted BBWAA overtures to require public disclosure of Hall of Fame votes. 

Rawitch expressed continued comfort with the existing rules, and he reiterated the most important threshold to the Hall of Fame.

“The number that really matters is 75%,” he says. “Once you’re in, you’re in.”

ORLANDO — “Everything goes up at the end of the day,” PGA of America president Don Rea Jr. says.

Rea, elected to his position in December, is referring to recent data from the National Golf Foundation that showed off-course golf participation surpassed on-course participation for a third consecutive year. 

In 2024, total golf participation in the U.S. rose 5% over 2023 to a record 47.2 million. While 28.1 million people played golf on a course, some of those players also participated in off-course activities, which tallied up to more than 33 million people last year. Of those off-course participants, 19.1 million exclusively played golf at a venue like Topgolf—which has quickly expanded to more than 80 venues worldwide—or virtually at a similar bar or lounge.

This week, at the PGA Show in Orlando, dozens of companies affiliated with off-course golf will be marketing themselves to the golf industry alongside traditional on-course golf brands. The evolution has hit the professional game, too, with this month’s launch of TGL, the indoor golf league founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.

“I don’t really care where the numbers are,” Rea says. “Because I thoroughly believe that of the 40-something million people that are out there, I will get them to green grass.”

One number Rea does care about, though, is the total participation figure. On-course golfers accounted for 8% of the estimated U.S. population last year.

“I do find it hard to believe that 92 out of 100 Americans haven’t been to a golf course to play a round of golf,” Rea says. “Yeah, that really bums me out.”

Rea thinks it’s reasonable to grow the percentage of Americans who play golf on an 18-hole course to 10%, which would mean adding roughly seven million golfers. “That would certainly make a difference,” he says. “And the more people that play, it’s better for our members.”