How SEGA and Netflix are expanding classic, ongoing, and new IP

Hi everyone, and welcome to edition 128 of The SEG3 Report!

We spent last week at the Tokyo Game Show, hosting our first SEG3 Tokyo and welcoming leaders from the likes of SEGA, TOHO, Disney, NBA, Crunchyroll, Riot Games, Sony, Warner Bros Discovery, Nippon TV, Blumhouse, Tokyo Broadcasting System, Fuji TV, Square Enix, Discord, Dentsu, Warner Music Japan, and more.

Though TGS ended a day early due to the rain (and trust me, the rain was wild!), it’s still a gaming-heavy week, so we’re spotlighting SEGA and Netflix’s three-title development deal.

Plus, our speed reads:

Let’s get into it.

Ahead of Tokyo Game Show, Netflix and SEGA announced a partnership spanning three titles: a live-action Crazy Taxi comedy written by Dan Gregor and Doug Mand (the duo behind 2025's The Naked Gun), a new animated Sonic series, and a live-action Stranger Than Heaven film. 

This isn’t the first time Netflix has looked to video games for IP inspiration. It already has a live-action Assassin's Creed series, which Ubisoft’s Helene Juguet talked about on The Speakeasy, and a Gears of War film in the pipeline. Plus, there’s animated series based on Minecraft, Magic: The Gathering and Clash of Clans in the works. As Brandon Riegg, Netflix's VP of Nonfiction and Transmedia, said: “Great games already have what every adaptation is chasing: characters people love, worlds they know by heart and fandoms that show up.”

The SEGA and Netflix development slate may seem to simple on its surface (three games, three series) but each is actually uniquely chosen and positioned to do something different for the IP.

Crazy Taxi arrived in arcades in 1999, and SEGA formally unveiled its return to games this June with Crazy Taxi: World Tour, due in 2027 and led by the original creator, Kenji Kanno. The film is being developed alongside the game relaunch.

The commercial choice to revive Crazy Taxi now echoes the Ampere data we covered in edition 78, which found adaptations can pull players back into a game, making awareness, and affinity, the goal.

SEGA's head of transmedia, Justin Scarpone, who we had the pleasure of chatting with during Tokyo Game Show for our podcast, and the episode is coming up soon!, has been candid about the problem this solves. While people in their 40s and 50s remember these legacy titles fondly, a younger generation has little to no connection to them at all (except maybe through an over-zealous parent).

The film's job is to be a front door for fans who have never heard of Crazy Taxi.

From a filmmaking perspective, the writing team is a strong choice. In this review of The Naked Gun, Gregor and Mand were praised for leaning on wordplay and sight gags rather than pop-culture references that could date the film. Protecting how a legacy comedy makes people laugh, rather than what it references, is built on a similar strategy we talked about in edition 115: the strongest franchises protect a feeling, not a format. The feeling of joy, or chaos, or hysterics, is what the Crazy Taxi film has to evoke, rather than a specific moment or touchstone from the gameplay. 

Of course, reviving legacy IP that has a strong attachment has a risk factor. As we talked about in edition 44, and with Shelley Macintyre of BBC Studios, if you stretch an IP too far, its core fans could switch off. SEGA does have a good track record of expanding IP without alienating its deeper fanbase, and this past April it launched Sega Universe with the tagline "no old, stay gold" to take older titles into film, music and fashion.

Sonic absolutely does not need reviving. His range runs from an F1 grid via the McLaren partnership we covered in edition 66, to a Balenciaga x SEGA collection with Sonic at its centre that rolls out worldwide today (22 September), to a Sonic x NBA kids' range at Primark and everyday Sonic apparel and toys at Walmart and Target. With a fourth film landing on 19 March 2027 and three seasons of Sonic Prime already on Netflix, there are very few places left where a fan can't find him.

So why commission a series for upper preschool? Because the fan SEGA is planning for is the kid who discovers Sonic on a screen first, and at the prime age to build IP attachment.

Choosing to reach upper-preschool kids with an animated series tracks with the strategy framework we covered in edition 41: match each format to the job the IP needs at that point in its lifecycle, whether that's awareness, retention or acquisition.

SEGA president Shuji Utsumi has said that the number of people who love SEGA's games without playing them is growing, and the strength of transmedia is that it multiplies the routes into a fandom. For an IP as well established as Sonic, more routes in for a diverse fanbase is the whole point.

But, similarly to the risk of alienating older fans of legacy IP being revived, every extension of IP should deepen the world rather than only monetise it; and fans can smell the difference.

Stranger Than Heaven is the one I’m most excited for on a personal level (though I do have vague memories of Crazy Taxi, and I used to own a SEGA Genesis with a Sonic game). The game is a prequel set in the Like A Dragon universe (referred to as ‘Yakuza’ more commonly in the West) and is made by the same studio, RGG Studio. It debuts on 15 January 2027, but the film is already in development.

In edition 71 we looked at the game-first model, where the game, and its success, comes first and everything else follows. SEGA is committing to a screen version before the game’s success has been established. That's not only a vote of confidence in RGG's track record, but it also harkens to a similar strategy I covered in edition 109 of Griffin Gaming Partners, which launched a $100m fund for indie games with Hollywood potential in May. Gaming IP is IP first, and a game second. If the IP has enough depth and richness, the game itself is just one way that IP can be explored and expressed.

Netflix is increasingly becoming a place for video games to explore transmedia marketing options, too. Rockstar debuted an extended GTA VI gameplay look on the platform, and it drew 31.1 million views in four days. This shows that Netflix is becoming a natural home for gaming promotion and universe expansion.

There’s another reason for a film based on Stranger Than Heaven in particular, which Justin goes into in the upcoming podcast, too. Roughly 60-70% of Like a Dragon merchandise is bought by women, and many fans found the series through YouTubers and Twitch streamers rather than by playing it themselves. This means they’re fans of the idea, of the themes and the concept, but the way they want to participate in the fandom is through merchandise and entertainment rather than gameplay. (I very much fall into this category. I quite enjoy watching my partner play ‘cinematic’ games like Death Stranding, but you’ll rarely catch me holding a controller unless it’s Mario Kart, as I mentioned last week!)

A live-action drama could reach the part of that audience that will never pick up a controller, like me, and is interested in a prequel story because they love the Like a Dragon universe. For new IP, that means you can start building fans before you have players, and the two expressions of the IP feed into each other, and grow the franchise. 

This strategy, however, also has risk (what doesn’t!). A film announced before the game is launched is betting that the game lands successfully. But, if the turnout for SEGA’s Tokyo Game Show display was anything to go by, anticipation is high.

Riegg described the deal as spanning "three completely different eras of SEGA's catalogue". If you're building a sports, entertainment or gaming brand, your IP probably sits in one of those eras, and each one needs a different question. 

If it's legacy IP, ask yourself:

Who has never heard of it, and what is their front door? There’s many ways to strategise an answer, and it doesn’t have to be a film or TV show. One example is Banijay's Creators Lab, which we covered in edition 66, which gave content creators access to classic formats as a low-cost way to test demand and reinvigorate IP.

If it's ongoing IP, ask yourself:

What is the product for the next fan, and can you develop it on a platform and in a format they already use? 

And for new IP, ask yourself:

What can you put in front of people before the product exists, and what happens if the product underperforms?

Figuring out which stage of its lifecycle your IP is in, and which medium is best placed to broaden it, is the key. Some IP can find expansion on the screen, others in a haute couture collaboration, or a creator partnership. And we're going deeper on how SEGA makes these calls with Justin, so keep your eyes and ears out for our next episode of The Speakeasy!

Creator Sports Network and FAN.live are giving 2,000+ creators a way to stream live NFL games built from official data.

TL;DR

Why you should care

Live sports broadcast rights are protected precisely because the broadcast is the product; you can't stream someone's feed with your own commentary over the top and call it fine, unless there’s a pre-existing arrangement (like FIFA had with TikTok for the World Cup). FAN.live doesn't touch the feed at all but instead builds its own 3D version of the game from the league's data, which makes it a recreation, not a rebroadcast (and infringement-free).

This distinction is the business model itself, and fills the same gap CSN has been built around from the start: finding a version of "live sports content" that sits outside exclusive media deals. 

FAN.live also promises that "one game becomes a thousand broadcasts”. Sport has always sold a shared moment, of everyone watching the same save or the same goal at the same time. If every creator's stream has its own camera choices and its own replays, that shared moment splits into however many personal versions exist.

But this might be exactly what a younger audience wants. CSN is explicitly building for viewers who'd rather watch through a creator's point of view than a broadcaster's. It’s the nuance between fragmentation and personalisation that matters, though. If the viewing experience begins to feel like the latter, there’s a real risk of drop-off in viewership, which matters as much to the NFL as it does to the creators making the ‘personalised’ content in the first place.

What it offers for the NFL is obvious: distribution. Football games will be broadcast in 2,000+ existing channels, each with an audience it didn't have to build. Of course, that attention then becomes borrowed (it isn’t the NFL’s; it’s whatever creator or whoever’s channel a fan is watching on). This means less control and, crucially, less data about those viewers. 

Whether a personalised, creator-led version of the game still feels like watching football together remains to be seen, but given all of the stats out there, fighting fragmentation with IP or rights enforcement isn’t the answer.

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That’s all for now, everyone - thanks again for reading the latest edition of The SEG3 Report. If you found it of interest, please do consider sharing with a colleague or friend who’d enjoy it too!