It’s emerged that media giant John Malone attempted to buy Netflix in the early days of the streaming service.
In an interview with CNBC, timed to coincide with Liberty Media’s investor day, Malone explained the attempt was made during his tenure as chairman of satellite television service DirecTV in the period 2008 to 2010.
“I tried to buy Netflix from [co-founder] Reed Hastings when the stock was eight bucks, but he wouldn’t sell it to me. You know, damn that bad luck,” he said. “I tried very hard to buy Netflix for DirecTV,” he said then. “Reed was pretty clear that his ambitions were to build a much bigger global company. And he was right to do that.”
The media stock is now trading at $678 on the Nasdaq index.
Netflix currently has 214 million subscribers worldwide. The streamer hasn’t commented on Malone’s intervention.
