OnePlus paid $300000 to be in House of Cards

House of Cards Season 4 just appeared on Netflix and the truly dedicated have already swallowed the latest adventures of Frank Underwood whole.

Along the way, you might have caught sight of a number of different smartphones being used by the main cast including devices from Samsung and Microsoft. And it turns out OnePlus were also in on that action, with the OnePlus One, OnePlus 2 and the dinker OnePlus X all popping up during the 13 episode run. None of these device cameos were particularly obvious, though Robin Wright's Claire Underwood does openly use a rather large OnePlus 2 in episode 2 for a split second.

It appears that the Chinese tech company paid very well for that placement, somewhere in the region of $300,000 according to a report on Weibo, the Chinese social network. That's a lot of cash for a company which doesn't have a normal advertising presence, preferring to become known through word of mouth and it's strange but effective invite-only buying method. Maybe they were just huge fans of the show and wanted to get their handsets on there. It has to make you wonder if other money is being paid to the production, particularly when it has been stated in the past that Netflix doesn't charge for product placement, instead showing a range of different devices which reflects real life.