I didn’t say they were the sole reason. I said “major player”. They were “The Netflix Original” as in the most distinguished. Lilyhammer went unrecognized for far too long and most people don’t even know about it anymore. While OITNB was also a major player in that time period, they didn’t rise to the level of becoming part of the iconic Netflix sound. No other show is engrained into the Netflix brand to such a degree.

That’s all. They aren’t the only reason, but one could argue that if they had failed, executives up top might have rethought the whole “original programming” thing at the time.