Turns out Netflix came knocking on ARY Digital’s door, and ARY said no. Salman Iqbal, the network’s chief, confirmed the streaming giant had approached ARY to license its content, but the broadcaster passed on the deal entirely.
His reasoning isn’t about Netflix specifically. It’s about not wanting Pakistan’s entertainment industry to end up dependent on a foreign platform for distribution. “Pakistan should prioritise developing its own OTT streaming platform instead of depending on global services like Netflix,” Iqbal said, confirming in the same breath that ARY had “declined an offer from Netflix to license its content.”
The case for a homegrown platform
Iqbal’s pitch is straightforward: Pakistan has the audience and the talent to build something of its own, so why hand that leverage to an outside company. He pointed to the size of the built-in market as the strongest argument for it. “Pakistan has the technology and creative potential to build a homegrown platform with a global audience,” he said, noting that the Urdu-speaking population worldwide runs past a billion people. That’s not a small number to build a streaming business around, and it’s hard to argue Pakistan couldn’t support its own version of a Netflix or a Zee5 with numbers like that behind it.
Where this fits into the bigger debate
This isn’t happening in a vacuum. The government has reportedly been in its own talks with Netflix recently, trying to get more Pakistani dramas and films visibility on the international stage. Officials seem to be on the side of more global platform exposure for local content, which puts them somewhat at odds with Iqbal’s stance.
