Trade in cultural products has traditionally been constrained by a combination
of law and technology. In Europe, digital sellers based in a given EU
country are not always able to distribute across borders. In January 2016, US-based
Netflix announced an expansion to 243 countries, accomplishing cross-border distribution
through business strategy. Changes in law or technology that facilitate
cross-national cultural trade have traditionally drawn the concern of observers
worried about the cultural heritage—and products—of small markets. The expansion
raises questions about what Netflix is doing. Is it a cultural hegemon, distributing
US fare into 243 countries? Or it is a facilitator of free trade, making the
products of even small countries more available outside their home markets (relative
to traditional distribution)? And how does the curated model—which limits the
number of movies the platform wants to distribute—affect Netflix’s function? To
shed light on these questions, we develop a new measure of the global availability of
a repertoire, the value-weighted geographic reach. Using this measure we find, first,
that Netflix makes many of the works from a wide variety of countries available in
many other countries. Second, we find that theatrical distribution strongly

• Netflix: global hegemon or facilitator of frictionless digital trade?