Series Superstars: How Subscription-Video-On-Demand (SVOD) Content Popularity Drives Provider Demand in the United States

Intense competition among major SVOD providers in the United States, such as Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, HBO Max, Apple TV+, Netflix, and Disney+, has driven a focus on acquiring and creating high-performing superstar series to attract subscribers. However, the impact of superstar series on subscriber numbers and overall audience demand remains unclear. This article explores the superstar effect, a concept introduced by Rosen (1981), which suggests that top performers can command significantly higher rewards despite only minor differences in talent. This effect results in notable disparities in market dominance and earnings. Using a novel dataset from Parrot Analytics, which measures daily audience demand through downloads, views, searches, and social media posts in the United States, we apply a Berry et al. (1995) structural demand estimation. We define “superstar series” as those with an average relative demand ranking in the top 1% for each quarter in an annual year. To assess how many superstar series a provider has compared to other providers, we calculate the percentage of a provider’s series that are classified as superstars. Our analysis reveals that while superstar series do impact subscriber numbers, consumers generally prefer a catalog with consistently popular series. Furthermore, consumer demand is relatively inelastic to changes in catalog popularity and even less responsive to the proportion of superstar series. Simulations indicate that enhancing the average popularity of content can lead to higher prices and more new subscribers, having a greater effect than merely adding superstar series.