“Squid Game” has been a valuable piece of original content for Netflix in its own right but perhaps the most impactful thing it did for the platform was expand the audience for Korean dramas and turn this category of content into the moneymaker it is for the platform today.
To put a number on the far reaching impacts of this show, Parrot Analytics’ Streaming Economics system estimates that since Q4 2021 (the quarter after “Squid Game” premiered), Korean dramas have been responsible for $3.4 billion in subscriber revenue for Netflix globally.
To date, the peak impact of K-dramas for Netflix was in Q1 2022 when these shows were responsible for just over 5% of Netflix’s subscriber revenue through acquiring and retaining subscribers for the platform. There was a surge of Netflix original K-dramas following the breakout success of “Squid Game.” In rapid succession starting at the end of 2021, a number of new K-Dramas were released on Netflix including “My Name,” “Hellbound,” “The Silent Sea” and “All of Us Are Dead.”
While the relative impact of K-dramas has cooled off from that peak, it appears to have leveled off at a higher point than in the pre “Squid Game” era. In quarters prior to the release of “Squid Game” (2020 – Q2 2021) K-dramas accounted for less than 2% of Netflix’s global subscriber revenue. Looking at the period after the peak (2023 – Q3 2024) this genre of shows now accounts for over 3% of Netflix’s quarterly global subscriber revenue on average.
The jury is still out on whether the second season of “Squid Game” will have similar wide ranging impacts to the first. Demand for the second season of the show to date has far surpassed the first. But this is not uncommon when comparing the first season of a breakout hit to later seasons when it has a significantly larger fan base.
A better indicator of whether K-dramas will continue growing in importance for Netflix is their popularity in the platform’s growth markets outside North America. In Q3 2024, we estimate that these shows were responsible for 3.7% of Netflix’s revenue in EMEA, the highest share for K-Dramas across the four regions the company reports on. There is significant demand for these series across the Asia-Pacific region – not surprising considering this is the home region of Korean dramas. Latin America has been particularly receptive to imported dramas, notably from Turkey, but increasingly K-Dramas are breaking through in the region as well. The popularity of K-Dramas in these growth regions is a positive sign that the genre will play an increasingly important role for Netflix’s top line as it sees more subscriber growth in these regions.
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