Seinfeld

Ben Gilbert (0:01)

So, David, I bought a DVD player for research for this episode.

David Rosenthal (0:05)

No way. Did you buy the box set?

Ben Gilbert (0:07)

Because there is some stuff, like facts about The Pilot, that are only available in the DVD commentary and don't exist anywhere online. So I had to go on eBay, buy a copy of the Seinfeld DVDs, and buy a brand new DVD player here in 2026 to view it.

David Rosenthal (0:28)

Do they even sell those on Amazon anymore?

Ben Gilbert (0:29)

They do. Sony makes them. They're like, I don't know, 100 bucks or something, but-

David Rosenthal (0:33)

Sony, there you go. Appropriately. Distributors of Seinfeld.

Ben Gilbert (0:37)

That's right. All right, should we do it?

David Rosenthal (0:39)

Let's do it.

Ben Gilbert (0:57)

Welcome to the fall 2026 season of Acquired, the podcast about great companies. Well, usually companies anyway.

David Rosenthal (1:05)

Usually. The podcast about great business assets.

Ben Gilbert (1:09)

And the stories and playbooks behind them. I'm Ben Gilbert.

David Rosenthal (1:13)

I'm David Rosenthal.

Ben Gilbert (1:14)

And we are your hosts.

Today listeners, we are taking a giant left turn. David and I were staring at each other, poring over our usual topic list. And we decided that we only wanted one criteria for selecting this one. What episode would we have the absolute most fun making? And can we do something different and fresh for acquired? And we found something we are very pumped about. The business of Seinfeld. The show Seinfeld.

We both had just read this astonishing stat that Seinfeld in the first six months of this year, in 2026, has been watched by 60 million Americans, which is about 20% of the entire US population.

David Rosenthal (2:00)

This show went off the air almost 30 years ago.

Ben Gilbert (2:02)

So I reached out to Nielsen to verify this.

Not only is it true, they said that if you update it through the end of August, that number is up from 60 million to 72 million Americans. Wow.

David Rosenthal (2:16)

That's almost the same audience size as the Seinfeld finale. When it aired.

Ben Gilbert (2:21)

This is a show that finished making new episodes nearly three decades ago, and yet we are all still watching it. So why?

Netflix's 2019 deal for Seinfeld, which was reported at well more than 500 million dollars over five years, was the largest sum that a streamer has ever paid an outside studio to license a series that's no longer in production. A hundred million dollars plus per year, decades after they are done making new episodes, and everything, the way the economics break down, the way that it is owned and structured, is essentially a complete accident of history.

Seinfeld managed to be one of the last shows of the old world, where everyone watched the same thing at the same time, while at the same time also having a foot in the new world, just as the internet was taking off. And the story is really an entrepreneurial one of obsession. Of craft. Of a team that created the number one show in America by doing everything completely different than the way it had ever been done before and defying all conventional wisdom. It is one of the best examples we have ever studied on Acquired, where the creators, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, were such big believers that their product was excellent, that they didn't care what anyone else thought, or what the numbers looked like at first. And how a small, passionate, early fan base with a slow burn went on to become their greatest asset. Today, listeners, we do an experiment here on Acquired, the business of Seinfeld.

David Rosenthal (3:53)

Let's do it.

Ben Gilbert (3:54)

So listeners, as always, you can find the visuals, charts, and illustrations of key concepts from this episode in our companion PDF at library.acquired.fm.

You can join the email list at acquired.fm slash email. That's where we will send all the behind-the-scenes photos that we found in research, past episode corrections, and vote on future episode topics, acquired.fm slash email. Come talk about this with us and the whole community in Slack. After you listen at acquired.fm slash Slack. Before we dive in, we want to thank our brand new presenting partner, Sierra.

David Rosenthal (4:28)

Yes. Sierra helps the great companies of the world build better customer experiences and drive stronger business outcomes with AI.

Ben Gilbert (4:36)

That's S-I-E-R-R-A, Sierra.

So with that, this show is not investment advice. David and I may have investments in the companies that we discuss and this show is for informational and entertainment purposes only. David, where do we begin?