Hulu confirmed Wednesday morning that all nine seasons (180 episodes) of Seinfeld will be available to stream exclusively on the online video site starting in June. According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon and Yahoo were also interested, as was Netflix, until it bought the rights for that other mega-successful ’90s sitcom back in 2014. Yada yada yada … Hulu ended up paying a little under $1 million per episode, Variety reports, though Deadline puts the number at around $700,000 per episode. Either way, it’s more than the $500,000 per episode Netflix reportedly paid for Friends last year.
Many fans will be happy to learn that the episodes streaming on Hulu will be in their original forms, unlike the syndicated reruns on TV, which are often sped up or recut. However, some viewers may not notice a difference—after all, as Slate showed last month, the difference between a normal-speed episode and a sped-up episode is subtle.
