Former BBC execs and sources detail Project Kangaroo, BBC's 2007 attempt to create a Netflix-like service which was blocked by UK's Competition Commission
blocked by antitrust enforcers! — is an all-time great case study on how disruptive innovation works and why regulators can't see it coming https://www.wired.co.uk/... https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The WIRED retrospective lands at the end of a long arc: the BBC tried to launch a joint Netflix-style service with commercial broadcasters in 2007, and the Competition Commission killed it before launch. What followed reads as a slow-motion replay of that missed start — iPlayer, once a trailblazer, saw its UK share fall from 40% in 2014 to 15% by 2019 amid tight media rules, prompting Ofcom to finally scrap the 30-day availability limit so the BBC could keep content on iPlayer for a year or more.
The intervening years show the same instinct recurring under different names: sources described a subscription streaming service dubbed Britflix in 2016, and by 2018 Europe's biggest broadcasters were pooling resources for country-level services to fight Netflix. The piece matters now because the UK is again expanding regulator power — the DMCC-era Digital Markets Unit can halt M&A outright — making the Kangaroo verdict a live reference point for how antitrust calls shape markets decades out.
First-order effects
- BBC, ITV and Channel 4 lost their head start in subscription streaming in 2007, ceding the UK market Netflix went on to dominate while the public broadcaster was left competing through iPlayer within regulatory limits.
- The retrospective hands UK policymakers a concrete case study just as the Digital Markets Unit gains power to block deals — the Competition Commission's Kangaroo ruling becomes evidence in debates over when blocking competition helps or harms consumers.
Second-order effects
- Broadcasters responded to the blocked joint venture with fragmented workarounds — Britflix-style plans and the 2018 pan-European pooling of resources — each weaker than the unified platform regulators prevented.
- Ofcom's 2019 relaxation of iPlayer's 30-day window shows regulators incrementally re-granting permissions a 2007 verdict had implicitly denied, a decade-plus lag between restriction and correction.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, antitrust bodies judging nascent platforms against today's market definitions will keep clearing the field for incumbents like Netflix, while the DMCC framework pushes UK regulation toward pre-emptive blocking of big-tech consolidation — two regimes pulling in opposite directions.
- Public-service broadcasters may remain structurally dependent on regulator sign-offs to compete, meaning UK streaming market structure is set as much in committee rooms as in product launches.
The trend: UK broadcasters have spent nearly two decades seeking regulatory permission to build what Netflix built without asking, even as the state's power to block media and tech deals grows.