Netflix is no longer just a place to watch movies and TV shows. The streaming company is now pushing into sports, games, podcasts, short videos, and more — a shift that experts have started calling "YouTube-ification," or Netflix trying to become something closer to YouTube.

The move into live sports is the clearest part of this plan. Netflix has committed to streaming all 47 games of the 2026 World Baseball Classic in Japan, live and on-demand, rather than just highlights Netflix. The company has also signed deals to show boxing matches, NFL games on Christmas, and WWE wrestling events Netflix. These are real-time events that keep people coming back on specific dates — the way traditional TV sports broadcasting has always worked.

The short-form video side is newer and less clear. Earlier this year, Netflix announced plans to redesign its app to include vertical video feeds — endless scrolling of short clips, the way TikTok or Instagram work TechCrunch. The company has also been buying rights to short-form videos and video podcasts to keep people opening the app every day, rather than once a week Business Insider.

Here is what matters: these two strategies are actually quite different, even though both get lumped together as "diversification."

Live sports is a scarcity play. Netflix pays for exclusive rights to specific high-value events — a boxing trilogy, football games on Christmas — and charges a subscription fee, just as cable networks have done for decades. Short-form video is the opposite: it relies on cheap, frequent content designed to get people opening the app multiple times a day, the way YouTube and TikTok do. Winning at sports does not require winning at short-form video, and vice versa. They are different bets with different economics.

The real question is whether Netflix can actually pull off the short-form part. For nearly twenty years, Netflix trained its users to browse a catalog, pick something, and sit down to watch it from start to finish. That is the opposite of how TikTok or YouTube work — those apps are built to keep you scrolling endlessly, reacting instantly to whatever you see next. Changing how people use an app is harder than it sounds. When my children were younger, I noticed they migrated toward whatever app required the least friction between the impulse to watch and the moment the video started playing. Netflix's current design rewards patience. That needs to change for this strategy to work.

The sports expansion has clear precedent and a proven business model. Traditional broadcasters have been doing it for decades. The push into YouTube's territory — endless short videos — is unproven for Netflix, and whether it makes sense remains genuinely uncertain.