In 2000, Reed Hastings flew to Dallas and offered to sell Netflix to Blockbuster for $50 million. Blockbuster said no. At its 2004 peak Blockbuster had 9,094 stores and about 84,300 employees. Here is how late fees near $800 million a year, close to $1 billion of debt from the Viacom split, Blockbuster Online and Total Access, a boardroom fight with Carl Icahn and the 2008 credit crash led to the bankruptcy filing on September 23, 2010, with about $1.02 billion in assets against $1.46 billion in debt. Dish bought what was left for about $320 million, one store survives in Bend, Oregon, and Netflix grew past 325 million members with about $45.6 billion in 2025 revenue. Its $2.8 billion Warner Bros break fee alone is 56 times the price Blockbuster refused.
Sources: Bloomberg (September 23, 2010), CNBC (September 22, 2020), Dish Network auction reporting (April 2011), Netflix Q4 2025 shareholder letter (January 2026), Netflix Warner Bros announcement (December 5, 2025), Reuters and CNBC (February 2026), Business Insider (August 12, 2020), Dish store closure reporting (2013), Netflix DVD service shutdown announcement (2023).
Photo credits: Reed Hastings 2010: JD Lasica, CC BY 2.0. John Antioco 2022: Glen E. Ellman, CC BY-SA 4.0. Last Blockbuster store, Bend, Oregon: Coasterlover1, CC BY-SA 4.0, and Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0. Blockbuster membership card: public domain. Blockbuster, Netflix and Dish logos: public domain. All via Wikimedia Commons.
Some scenes are illustrative AI generated visuals. No generated faces of named people.
