What is Ted Sarandos's Net Worth and Salary?
Ted Sarandos is an American businessman who has a net worth of $200 million. Ted Sarandos is best known as the co-CEO of the media company Netflix. Before he assumed that position in 2020, he served as Netflix's chief content officer, and was responsible for launching the streamer's first round of original programming. Beyond Netflix, Sarandos sits on a number of boards, including those of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and the Peabody Awards.
Netflix Salary and Stock Holdings
In a typical recent year, Ted has earned around $20 million in total salary, bonuses and equity grants. His base salary is $1 million. In 2023, he earned $50 million. That made him the highest-paid media CEO in the world for the year, just slightly edging out Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav's salary.
Ted Sarandos is one of the three largest individual shareholders of Netflix stock. In August 2018 Ted owned 497,699 shares of the company. At that point, his shares were worth $205 million before taxes. Within a few years those shares were worth $300 million. He has sold significant chunks of his stake through a planned sale process. Today Ted appears to own around 70,000 shares.
Personal Life & Real Estate
With his first wife, Michelle, Sarandos has two children named Sarah and Anthony. Both work in film. After getting divorced, Sarandos married political activist Nicole Avant in 2009. Nicole's father Clarence Avant was an extremely successful music entrepreneur and producer. Nicole's mother Jackie was shot during a home invasion in December 2021. Clarence died in August 2023.
Ted and Nicole couple primarily reside in the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. In July 2018 Ted and Nicole paid $34 million to acquire a mansion in Montecito, California from talk show host Ellen Degeneres. In 2013 they bought a Malibu beach house from David Spade for $10.2 million. They also own a mansion in Hancock Park, California which they purchased for $16 million from the divorcing Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas. In total they own more than $60 million worth of real estate that we know about.
Early Life and Education
Ted Sarandos Jr. was born on July 30, 1964 in Phoenix, Arizona as the fourth of five siblings. He has three older sisters and a younger brother. Sarandos is of Greek descent on his father's side. Growing up, he became immersed in television through such shows as "I Love Lucy" and "The Andy Griffith Show." While working at a video store in his teens, Sarandos gained an understanding of people's tastes in television and film. Meanwhile, he wrote for his high school newspaper and developed connections with people in the entertainment industry after interviewing actor Ed Asner. For his higher education, Sarandos went to Glendale Community College in Arizona.
Career Beginnings
In 1983, Sarandos became store manager of the Arizona Video Cassettes West chain. Over the ensuing years, he managed eight retail video stores. In 1988, Sarandos was named Western Regional Director of Sales and Operations for East Texas Distributors, one of the largest video distributors in the US. He later became Vice President of Product and Merchandising for the video rental chain West Coast Video. In that role, which he held until 2000, Sarandos was responsible for negotiating revenue deals to transition the company from VHS to DVD technology.
Netflix
Sarandos joined the media company Netflix in 2000 after meeting with its co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings the previous year. He later became the company's chief content officer, responsible for overseeing its entertainment output. Notably, Sarandos launched Netflix's first round of original programming, starting with the crime dramedy series "Lilyhammer" in 2012. The year after that, the streamer released the political thriller series "House of Cards," which was the first television series to be produced specifically for Netflix. With the $100 million purchase of "House of Cards," Sarandos inaugurated the model by which Netflix buys multiple seasons of shows without ordering pilots first. Among his other innovations, he began employing algorithms to predict what programs viewers would want to watch before the programs would even be produced. Sarandos has said that Netflix aggregates audiences over a long span of time, and uses regression models to tell how successful a program will be over the life of its license.
Sarandos is known for dismissing the conventional logic of traditional models of network television. Although he is a longtime fan of broadcast television, he says the model is now archaic, and that a new model needs to be used to prioritize the needs and wants of specific sets of consumers. This model involves international reach and niche appeal based on personalization. Due to Sarandos's focus on streaming and original programming, Netflix eventually shifted away from its mail-order DVD service. In 2020, Sarandos became the co-CEO of the company alongside Hastings, and also became a member of the board of directors. After Hastings stepped down as co-CEO in early 2023, Greg Peters became co-CEO alongside Sarandos.
Getty
Board and Advisory Appointments
Beyond Netflix, Sarandos sits on a number of boards. He is a member of the Peabody Awards board of directors, and a member of the board of trustees of Exploring the Arts. Elsewhere, Sarandos is a trustee of the International Documentary Association and the American Film Institute, and a member of the advisory board of the Los Angeles Greek Film Festival. In 2020, he became the chair of the board of trustees of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.
Honors and Awards
Sarandos has received many honors and awards for his business leadership. In 2008, he was named a Henry Crown Fellow by the Aspen Institute, and in 2010 was named to the Hollywood Reporter's "Digital Power 50" list. Sarandos made the list again in 2012. The following year, he was listed on Time magazine's "Time 100." In 2015, Sarandos earned the Pioneer Award from the International Documentary Association and the Brandon Tartikoff Legacy Award from the National Association of Television Program Executives. Among his other honors, he received the Producers Guild of America Milestone Award in 2019 and was named Entertainment Person of the Year at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in 2022.
