Larry Tanz, VP of Content, EMEA, Delivers a Keynote Speech at the Enders TMT Leaders Live 2026 Conference

Good morning, everybody. Thank you for inviting me to speak today.

This year marks a decade since a big moment for Netflix.

In 2016 we made our first TV originals outside the US - Marseille in France, Cable Girls in Spain and, of course, The Crown here in the UK.

When I started here back in 2014, I heard a lot of talk about how Netflix would change the television industry. A lot of talk, actually, about how we'd ruin it. We would Americanise global culture. We'd be slaves to "the algorithm."

But, I think it's safe to say those predictions didn't quite come true. From Heweliusz in Poland to The Leopard in Italy, Dear Child in Germany, Lupin in France and - a few weeks after Adolescence made BAFTA history - it's clear that incredible local storytellers have found a home, and an audience, on Netflix.

What people almost never asked back then was a different question: how would the TV industry change Netflix? Ten years on, I think that's the more interesting story.

In short, it forced us to transform our business model.

We started like any Hollywood studio: flying European producers out for meetings in LA, and flying Netflixers to Paris, Madrid or London. Apart from being exhausting, it didn't work.

Up to that point, we had some hits, but plenty of flops too. From California, we just had no way of knowing what people in Stockholm, Warsaw or Istanbul would want to watch when they sat down on the sofa at the end of a long day.

So, in 2019, I moved with my family to Amsterdam to build out our creative and production teams across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. I've raised three kids here … I'm an EU citizen … and I'm already on my third Director-General of the BBC - which I think officially makes me part of the furniture.

And we've really evolved. We went from a programming hub in California serving a global audience to a team of local commissioners across the region, each focused on their own audiences, with local sensibilities, country-level budgets and decisions.

And we started making better programming choices. Most of the time, people watch shows in their own language, that reflect their own lives. And now we had the teams on the ground to make them.

Those local teams did know how to find those stories … to develop and produce them with talented local writers, filmmakers and producers … and to make them in ways that would resonate with local audiences. Shows like Tear Along the Dotted Line in Italy, The Empress in Germany, Forgotten Love in Poland, and countless others.

We also saw what happens when the best in local storytelling meets the best in global distribution. Casa de Papel broke out from Netflix Spain, Netflix Germany triumphed with All Quiet on the Western Front - and outside of EMEA, Netflix Korea gave the world Squid Game .

And Netflix UK … well, where to begin? The Gentlemen , Black Doves , Supacell , Baby Reindeer , Adolescence , Grenfell … all commissioned by a UK team, based here in London led by Anne Mensah.

Our biggest global hits all have deep local roots - from the commissioners to the producers to the casts to the crews. Audiences respond to cultural authenticity in storytelling, and they can spot it even when they don't know the culture well.

There has never been a show that went global that didn't work at home first. Let me repeat that - there has never been a show that went global that didn't work at home first.

How many of the people who loved Adolescence do you think have been to Doncaster? I'm pretty confident it's less than one percent. But the show has such a vivid sense of place that it just feels real. That's not something a Hollywood executive can fake - and it's certainly not something "the algorithm" can engineer.

I hear so much about this mythical algorithm. For the record, the algorithm has nothing to do with what we make or how we make it. Its sole job is to help you find something you'd love to watch.

Shows like Adolescence and Grenfell are the product of strong local industries: the soaps where actors get their first break … the indie production companies willing to back risky scripts ... the grassroots drama clubs … the skilled crews directors can rely on.

With its mixed ecology of public service and commercial networks, underpinned by strong incentives and a broadly stable regulatory environment, the UK has one of the healthiest TV ecosystems in the world.

It nurtures creative talent, it encourages risk and it rewards originality - which is why so much of the world's best television is made here. That ecosystem has been essential to Netflix's success over the past decade. We would not be the company we are today without it.

But we all know, the ecosystem is under pressure right now. Large numbers of skilled people are out of work. The middle layer of production has been hollowed out. It is becoming harder for new talent to break in.

I know what some of you are thinking: "Netflix is part of the problem." An American business undermining British broadcasters. "TV tourists" not playing by the rules.

Perhaps if we had stuck with our 2016 model, that might have been true. But Netflix UK today is a UK-based business. Our teams are here. We pay taxes here. We work with over 200 British production companies. We have employed 50,000 people in the UK creative industry over the last decade. We make our shows here. We engage with unions and we respect the local talent community.

And the UK is just one example - we have local country teams right across Europe doing exactly the same thing.

To put it simply, our success depends on having great local programming - and that depends on a strong local industry.

We are additive to that industry, not a replacement for it.

Like most of the leaders in this room, I am responsible for running a profitable business. But our UK revenues do not disappear into a black box in California - they are recycled into more British investment, more stories, more jobs and more infrastructure.

Our track record over the past ten years bears that out. While other entertainment companies pull back, we are leaning in - in our local commissioning, in our local partnerships and in building the next generation of talent, wherever they get their start.

In fact, this year we'll be investing more in European stories than ever before. And that record will be broken next year. And the year after that.

That investment means we have connected British productions to new audiences all over the world, creating more investment for the creative economy.

Take Baby Reindeer . At the height of Covid, we commissioned and financed a Clarkenwell Films production, based on a Scottish stand-up's Fringe show. It went on to win Emmys and Golden Globes and BAFTAS - and Richard Gadd's new show Half Man is now crushing it on BBC One. That is the ecosystem working: risk in one corner, rewards and opportunities rippling across the system.

That is why we do not accept the idea that Netflix is simply passing through. We are part of the industry - in the UK, in Italy, in Spain, and right across Europe. And like you, we are worried about where it goes next.

Where we need to be careful is in how we diagnose the problem - and what we choose to change.

If we treat this purely as a story about "big versus small" or "streamers versus broadcasters," we will make policy choices that feel satisfying in the short term but make the underlying problems worse .

Right now, there are a few major forces at play. Professionally made TV shows and films now compete for audiences and advertising budgets with user-generated video. Production costs are rising faster than traditional funding models can support. And on top of that, we have a tangle of legacy rules that no longer reflect the realities of the industry today.

Right across Europe, we're also seeing emergent policy proposals around investment obligations, IP ownership, and AI, any of which could unintentionally choke off investment and innovation.

On investment obligations … unlike some of our competitors, we have consistently met, and in many cases exceeded, the targets set for us across Europe - not because we were forced to, but because our business depends on investing in local stories that people love.

The risk now is that ever more rigid, prescriptive obligations start to dictate not just how much we invest, but what we make and through whom we make it - regardless of whether those intermediaries are truly small independents or production companies actually owned by global conglomerates.

If we go too far down that path, you end up with a system where companies like ours are required to funnel money through specific structures into shows audiences may not actually want to watch - instead of backing the projects, partners and stories with the best chance of succeeding.

On IP and ownership - as someone who ran a couple of independent studios before coming to Netflix, I completely understand the instinctive feeling that rights should stay with local producers. That logic underpinned many of the rules that helped build Europe's indie sector in the first place. Over the past seven years I have spent a huge amount of time talking to producers about this and hearing many different perspectives. As a result of those conversations, we have proactively and thoughtfully evolved our approach to be more flexible.

In reality, there is not one model that is always better - not for us or for the producers we work with. Different projects, and different producers, need different routes to market. Some value having a project fully cash-flowed and de-risked … others want to invest upfront and take on more downstream risk and ownership upside.

A healthy industry offers that range of choice - and many great shows would never have been made under a single ownership and funding model.

If the regulatory direction of travel were towards a one-size-fits-all approach, where IP always defaults to local producers by law, regardless of who is actually taking the risk, the consequences would be significant. We'd be discouraged from commissioning ambitious original local stories and taking chances on new voices. We'd be pushed to smaller licensing deals for library and recycled formats. It would mean fewer risks taken and fewer new voices heard.

Additionally, in much of Europe today, many of the entities still classed as "indies" are no longer small, cash-constrained outfits. They are large international groups with serious market power, often backed by private equity or sovereign wealth.

When laws and quotas treat those companies exactly like fragile independents, two things happen: first, genuinely small indies find it harder to break through; second, money invested locally is less likely to be reinvested in local talent and production but instead flows to the big media groups that may be far less committed to British talent and infrastructure.

So let's not sleepwalk into a world where legacy definitions and incremental investment obligations distort our ability to take risks and innovate - a world that, in some respects, already exists in countries like France, where ever-higher obligations and restrictions are getting harder to sustain, without any clear evidence that audiences are better served.

Increasingly, we hear other places in Europe looking to that model as if it offered all the answers. We do not share that view. The UK has thrived because there have been many routes to market and real choice for creators - and that is what we should be trying to preserve.

The good news is that the alternative is already visible - in the way we have tried to operate here.

Here in the UK, we have invested heavily in production not because anyone mandated it, but because we see ourselves as part of this industry's long-term future. We are an employer. We are a repeat customer for hundreds of British companies. And a large chunk of our revenues are recycled back into more British creativity.

That virtuous circle is the whole point of our model.

We have listened carefully to what the industry needs. And we have established bespoke ways of working with unions throughout Europe.

Where strong representative unions exist, we work through them, with agreements that reflect the European Copyright Directive. Where those structures do not exist, we use other mechanisms to achieve the same goals. In both cases, we have already delivered significant additional income to local talent - ahead of regulation.

All of us here can probably agree that there's an industry-wide need to invest in next-generation talent and skills. And we take that very seriously. We are growing the entertainment industry through our training and development programs. To date, over 60,000 people have come through our programs in EMEA. These writers, directors, visual effects artists, sound engineers and more go on to work not just with Netflix, but right across the industry.

What we are asking for, in return, is not a free pass. It is a regulatory environment that rewards this kind of behaviour, instead of accidentally penalising it. One that distinguishes between true independents and global "super-indies" … between companies that put money, training and risk into local production, and those that simply license and extract.

That brings me to AI. I know people are understandably anxious about it. But anxiety should not dictate policy. We have to make sure the road ahead still allows for creativity and innovation led by talent.

AI is an evolution of tools we already know - not a replacement for human creativity.

Our north star is - and always will be - quality driven by talent. We win when we have the best TV shows and films - stories that resonate deeply with audiences. That connection comes from the script, the performances, the directing, the chemistry on set - in other words, the human elements of storytelling. It's why my colleagues and I get up in the morning and are so passionate about the work we get to do.

Any new technology, including AI, has to pass a basic test for us - does it help creators make better stories and make them easier to find for audiences?

We are very clear about a few principles. As rights-holders ourselves, we care deeply about copyright and fair compensation - and we believe existing frameworks, backed up by strong contracts, can adapt to new technologies. We also recognise the importance of consent around realistic digital replicas and are building that into how we work with talent.

From post-production to helping people discover work they might love, we are exploring where AI can help. But we need to make sure we are doing so cautiously and transparently - and in a way that supports human creators rather than replaces them.

So, back to that original question: how did the TV industry change Netflix? I am proud to say it made us more local, more responsible and more ambitious for what this industry can be. We know we have a duty to protect the health of the ecosystems we operate in - because it really does take a village to raise a Baby Reindeer.

And at Netflix, the biggest lesson of our first ten years in TV is simple: when you genuinely invest in local talent, you get risk-taking, bold programming and sustained growth - a rising tide that lifts the whole industry.

Looking ahead to the next ten years, we all want UK television to thrive. We all depend on a vibrant, diverse and sustainable industry.

Our real rival is the flood of user-generated and increasingly AI-generated content that pulls attention away from professionally made TV and film.

That challenge is only going to intensify, which is why everyone in our industry has a shared interest in rallying around high-quality, professionally produced stories and the environment that makes them possible .

When I look around this room, I see the writers, producers, commissioners and partners who make that happen every day. It is a virtuous cycle - but the UK and Europe have to stay competitive as global centres of creative excellence.

To keep doing that, we need to be crystal clear about the conditions that make it possible:

• The flexibility to try new things.

• The incentives to take creative and financial risks.

• A tax and regulatory regime that welcomes investment and recognises when companies are reinvesting in the market, not extracting from it.

• Sensible, proportionate AI rules that protect people and rights without freezing innovation in a high-creativity sector with low-risk use cases, like entertainment.

If we get that right, there is no limit to how far this industry can go. We must safeguard the conditions that allow the next generation of those stories to be made - so that, to borrow a line from The Crown , we can "keep moving forward" together.