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Fandom’s Data Identifies Which Genres & Titles Provide Greatest Opportunity for Each Streaming Service

April 2, 2024

Proprietary Data Provides Invaluable Information For Studios, Streamers and Network to Help Shape Plotlines, Characters and Episodes

Fandom is the world’s largest fan platform sitting at the intersection of entertainment & gaming. With 350M monthly visitors and over 45M pages of content across its portfolio of brands (including Gamespot, TV Guide and Metacritic), we have extremely valuable first party data that enables us to provide unique and proprietary insights & trends around anything & everything in gaming and entertainment. Fandom’s is the only platform in the world that has fan insights and their connections across IP including every detail of every imagined world - episodes, plotlines, characters, relationships offering licensors critical information that can shape their content.

Overview
As the streaming landscape becomes more competitive with subscriber levels reaching saturation points, price increases driving churn, and the market demanding a clear path to profitability - streamers must differentiate their offerings and discover quickly what resonates with their audiences all while being conscious of content costs.

Streamers tied to the traditional linear ecosystem have embraced licensing as the best opportunity to drive revenue despite the risks to their retention and brand strength. Importantly, digital-first streamers have sought licensing relationships to build up their content libraries without bearing the large production costs of creating original franchises. But how does Disney, Paramount, Netflix determine the best content to license?

“The pressure on profitability in streaming means studios with content libraries can no longer afford to hoard content that has immediate licensing value (and topline revenue) and studios with content budgets can’t throw hundreds of millions towards a single original content franchise (to save significant cost),” said Stephanie Fried, CMO of Fandom. “The answer is licensing - revenue generating for studios with libraries, and cost savings for studios who need to build them.”

Because of the broad and deep data Fandom has around the strongest franchises from the past 50 years, we’re able to identify which shows have the most value for subscriber growth and retention and, importantly, which streamer relationships (licensor/licensee) will maximize the value for each party.

Macro Takeaways:

  1. The Disney+ brand is strong and the cross-visitation scores (the score that determines how strong a TV show overlaps with a streaming service fandom) are much larger than that of the other streaming services.

  2. Reality TV and soaps would not have a lot of success licensed to other streaming services due to lack of cross-visitation with other streaming services’ fans:

    1. Example: Dancing with The Stars would be -.65% successful on Amazon

    2. General Hospital would be -1% less successful on Netflix

  3. Some shows would have success on multiple streaming services, so there is a bit of “it’s anybody’s game” here:

    1. Gotham overlaps with both fans of Max programming and Amazon programming.

    2. Both Peacock and Apple TV fans over index for Barney fandom

    3. Both Max and Disney+ fans over index for Teen Wolf fandom

    4. Max fans are 36% more likely to visit our Frasier Wiki, while Amazon fans are 97% more likely. Both streaming service’s fans over index for Frasier fandom.

    5. That being said, we know from past trends that Netflix has seen the most success here, especially during the writer’s strike and the pandemic (think One Tree Hill, Suits and Band of Brothers)

  4. Creating a deeper, genre-specific catalog (licensed or original) continues to be a huge driver of platform differentiation, which 2-in-3 subscribers claim is incredibly important for retention.

Best Target Content & Shows for Netflix
In general, Netflix is a broad platform with content across multiple genres and a diverse set of audiences carving out their own sections of the content library. However, we did find two areas where Netflix viewers are most likely to show interest outside of the Netflix content portfolio - nostalgic comedies and high-concept action adventure dramas.

Netflix viewers love to watch reruns of their past generation sitcom favorites that will guarantee a good time while they have some time to spare at the end of the work day, they should explore nostalgic sitcoms to drive consistent engagement such as:

  • Fairly Odd Parents [2.8x]

  • American Dad [2.4X]

  • Hey Arnold (2.35x),

  • Boy Meets World” (1.17x)

  • Saved by the Bell (1.12x)

Due to their higher propensity for binge watching, Netflix viewers also gravitate towards shows they might recognize but never got the chance to watch because of its weekly format on another platform/cable tv. Suits and Breaking Bad are great examples of this Netflix effect that could be duplicated with shows including:

  • Legion (1.85x)

  • HBO’s Rome (1.31x)

  • Snowpiercer (1.29x)

Best Target Content & Shows for Disney+
Disney+ is one of the most differentiated streaming platforms with strengths as both a family and an action adventure streamer. Disney’s best opportunity to continue to differentiate is to double-down on being the leader in family entertainment. Disney clearly has a treasure trove of kids/family-friendly content, but our data uncovers high cross-visitation to other family-friendly content such as:

  • Calilou (7.3x)

  • Veggie Tales (5.94x)

  • Tom and Jerry (5.38x)

  • Thomas the Tank Engine (4.7x)

Best Target Content & Shows for Amazon Prime
The Amazon viewer has found success in bringing in fans of the action genre into its fold with critically acclaimed shows like The Boys, Jack Ryan, Reacher, and Invincible. Amazon has continued to expand into other action sub-genres like Fantasy (Lord of the Rings, and Wheel of Time) and should continue to build against this segment with high over-indexing IP such as:

  • Jackie Chan Adventures (3.82x)

  • Jupiter’s Legacy (9.19x)

  • My Adventures With Superman [8.7]

  • Mayor of Kingstown (1.7x)

  • The Americans (1.6x)

Amazon viewers also strong interest in the adjacent Sci-Fi Action sub-genre and could further engage that segment through greater investing in IP such as:

  • Jupiter’s Legacy [9x]

  • Firefly [4x]

  • Altered Carbon [3.7]

Best Target Content & Shows for Max
The Max viewer is looking for high quality, prestige programming that will whisk them away to fully immersive worlds with thought provoking characters and landscapes such as:

  • The Great (1.9x)

  • The Bear (1.3x)

High fantasy IP in the vein of Game of Thrones and The Last of Us also garners high cross-over and interest among Max viewers as quality heightens the entertainment quality of these franchises. Opportunities in high fantasy for Max include:

  • Good Omens (1.8x)

  • Haunting of Hill House (1.8x)

  • Dominion (3.3x)

  • Reboot (3x)

Best Target Content & Shows for Hulu
The Hulu viewer wants the cable viewing experience of a quick “feel-good” 30min sitcom of friends and family comedy oriented programming such as:

30 Minute Comedies

  • Parks and Recreation (1.9x)

  • Fresh Prince (1.8x)

  • The Nanny (1.7x)

  • Roseanne (1.7x)

When they aren’t looking for a laugh, they are gravitating towards something a bit more serious but with identity and human relationship at the center:

Prestige Dramas

  • Queen’s Gambit (1.7x)

  • Black Mirror (1.6x)

  • Orphan Black (1.6x)

  • Euphoria (1.6x)

  • Severance (1.5x)

Best Target Content & Shows for Paramount+
The Paramount viewer is looking for a sci-fi fix when Star Trek and Halo are off-season. They’re looking for a slice of life on how it is to live in imagined worlds beyond our own:

Space Science Fiction

  • Battlestar Galactica (4x)

  • Farscape (3.8x)

  • Firefly (2.9x)

  • Babylon 5 (1.9x)

When they are beamed back into our world, they are time-traveling back to nostalgia animation that are from the 90s and 2000s similar to family friendly animations like Rugrets, Spongebob, that once dominated the Saturday mornings for these millennials:

90’s/2000’s Animation

  • Recess (2.3x)

  • Ed, Edd n Eddy (2.3x)

  • Kim Possible (2.2x)

  • The Proud Family (2x)

Best Target Content & Shows for Apple TV
The Apple+ viewer is looking for investigative thrillers, with dark, and mysterious themes, in the same vein as Servant, Defending Jacob, and Home Before Dark, and Severance. Shows that are character-driven narratives will do well on Appletv+

Young Child Animation + Young Education Programming

  • Babar (4x)

  • PB&J Otter (4x)

  • Between the Lions (6x)

  • Blue’s Clues (3.9x)

  • Backyardigans (1.6x)

Eerie Magical Realism Dramas

  • The Leftovers (4.4x)

  • The Haunting of Hill House (4x)

  • Twin Peaks (3.4x)

Best Target Content & Shows for Peacock
The NBC/Peacock viewer is on the lookout for crime drama in the same vein as its long-running “Law & Order” series and medical series such as Grey’s Anatomy, House, and Chicago Med. These viewers are highly engaged as these shows typically run for 10+ years and have multiple spin-offs.

Medical + Crime Procedurals

  • The Resident (5.5x)

  • 9-1-1 (4.7x)

  • ER (4.4x)
    CSI (4.4x)

  • Ghost Whisperer (4.4x)

When these viewers aren’t solving a murder mystery, they are watching cable hits from the 90s. These viewers continue to engage with series that run multiple years and are looking to immerse themselves in the imagined world before social media, and cell phones took over our lives.

Nostalgic Family Sit-Coms

  • Family Matters (5.9x)

  • Drake and Josh (5x)

  • Full House / Fuller House (4.6x)

  • Boy Meets World / Girl Meets World (4.3x)

METHODOLOGY
Cross Visitation Data on Fandom.com
Source: FanDNA, Fandom’s first-party platform data