Two permanent Netflix House locations will open in Dallas and Philadelphia later this year. Courtesy of Netflix.
Netflix’s success with experiential hubs will likely inspire other brands to follow suit, marketing experts tell Vendelux.
The California-based streamer has unveiled plans for two permanent Netflix House locations. The venues, at Philadelphia’s King of Prussia Mall and Dallas’s Galleria, will feature immersive experiences based on the brand’s TV shows and movies, as well as fan events, screenings and food and cocktails based on Netflix IP.
“It tells us that experiential is no longer a side show. It’s a core business strategy,” said Tim Nash, head of creative strategy at We Are IPOS, a Manchester-based marketing and talent agency.
He says the expansion is a no-brainer after the “massive success” of the “Squid Game” experience in New York City, where fans can play less fatal versions of the life-or-death matches featured in the South Korean drama for just $39.
The New York experience is often sold out, and Netflix says the location—along with four others in London, Madrid, Sydney and Seoul—will have welcomed half a million visitors by the end of the summer.
It mirrors the success of the show itself, which has topped nearly 600 million views globally, becoming the studio’s most watched show ever, according to Variety.
A Netflix spokesperson told Vendelux that they measure the success of immersive experiences in “many ways,” adding that they’ve already launched 40 unique experiences that have reached 10 million fans in 300 cities across the world.
Netflix House will give the streamer an opportunity to mine its growing library for similar success stories. It’s an ambitious approach, and a far cry from the studio’s first experiential swing in 2017, when it debuted a “Stranger Things” virtual reality pop-up at San Diego Comic-Con.
“Squid Game: The Experience” will have drawn half a million visitors in multiple cities by the end of the summer. Courtesy of Netflix.
“The era of pop-ups as one-off stunts is fading,” Nash told Vendelux. “Instead, brands must build immersive, evolving, permanent ecosystems that invite continuous engagement. Netflix House, permanent, multi-city, constantly refreshed, sets a new bar.”
The Philadelphia house will debut with immersive experiences based on the TV shows “Wednesday” and “One Piece.” It will also feature games based on different programming powered by Sandbox VR, as well as a nine-hole mini-golf course and a theater for trivia nights, screenings and “special talent appearances.”
The Dallas house will feature experiences based on the beloved “Squid Game” and “Stranger Things” pop-ups that have been time-tested at cities throughout the world, along with a game room “packed with physical challenges, immersive story rooms, and retro-style games.”
Another Netflix House is set to open at BLVD Las Vegas in 2027, though details for that one have yet to be revealed.
“With fresh experiences dropping regularly, there’s always a new reason to come back,” said Netflix CMO Marian Lee in a statement.
She called the houses “fandom coming to life.”
“We are thrilled to welcome our new neighbors in Philadelphia, Dallas, and Las Vegas to explore Netflix in a whole new light, enhanced by the unique charm and culture of each city,” she added.
Dax Callner, an experiential marketer based in the UK, oversaw outdoor showings for Netflix back when it was mostly in the DVD delivery business.
The events involved wrapping the screen in a large red envelope that would later be “opened” to begin the show.
Callner says the live experiences are probably not a big money maker compared to what it costs to put them together.
“My gut says it’s about driving differentiation in an increasingly competitive streaming market, resulting in more subscribers,” he told Vendelux in an email. “With something like ‘Squid Game,’ they are leveraging the zeitgeist of that content to attract an audience and build equity in the mothership.”
Netflix did not answer questions about whether the live experiences have been profitable on their own.
Other studios have also dipped into the experiential pond in the past few years. HBO debuted a “Game of Thrones” experience at SXSW in 2019. The experience has since toured globally, culminating in the opening of the official studio tour in Northern Ireland in 2022. Last year, Warner Bros. Discovery opened an “afterlife experience” ahead of the release of the film “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” where fans could enjoy everything from a beauty appointment to a horoscope reading in the haze of the afterlife.
All this points to a robust future for live events.
Experiential marketing is set to outpace overall advertising and marketing spending from 2022 to 2026, a trend that began in the two decades leading to the COVID-19 pandemic and picked up soon after lockdowns ended. Additionally, G2 finds that 51 percent of companies plan to increase their experiential investments from 2024 to 2026, with the overall sector growing to $57 billion by 2027.
“It actually reflects a trend in which digital brands (Amazon, Warby Parker, Apple) are enhancing their brand profile and increasing online sales by creating physical embodiments of the brand,” Callner said. “It’s a proven strategy if you do it well (and an expensive one if you don’t)!”
