It's not obsolete because as a content producer the global players are not always willing to pay top dollar for your content. In many cases you can get more money by selling to multiple local players with single language, geo-restricted distribution rights. And this is the tip of the iceberg because you also have different types of rights for theatrical vs streaming distribution, and your strategy could interleave them in multiple non-intuitive ways.
I understand there is a long running system in place, but from the point of view of a modern viewer/customer it all just looks like a mess.
Basically, there should be a place where you click on a button, pay some money and play the thing anywhere in the world.
Like even some possibly inflated/default price. Like this way you would get something from each viewer in geos where you have not actually sold the rights & nothing really says you can't rise or lower the price if you see demand or lack there of.
Anything else frankly looks like excuses to a normal viewer/customer in the year or 2021.
How long the system has existed has nothing to do with it. It's pure economics. If you owned content rights would you sell it for $1M when you get split up rights and get $2M for partial rights and still have upside for the remainder? If someone on the internet said "it just doesn't make sense to a viewer" would that change your mind?
No it wouldn't. The dollars don't lie. The viewers opinion is reflected in what they pay for, and that is reflected in what distributors are willing to pay. These things do change over time as the landscape shifts and new business model possibilities show up (eg. Disney+ day and date streaming releases), but it has absolutely nothing to do with your armchair notions of what makes sense to a "normal viewer". They pay or they don't, businesses are rewarded by figuring out the aggregate implications.
