Korean pop culture, in numbers

A company that has charted in a country once charts there again

Every other page here counts titles. This one counts the companies behind them, and asks the question a company actually has: does getting into a country once make the next one easier?

If a company has already put a series on a country's Netflix top 10, is its next series more likely to chart there?

The raw answer, and why you should not believe it yet

How this is counted. One chance = one company, one country, one of that company's series other than its first. A chance is "with a foothold" if an earlier series by the same company had already charted in that country.

A company's next seriesChartedChancesRate
In countries where that company had already charted5,56816,95532.8%
In countries where it had not2,09924,5238.6%

That is 24.2 points — 3.8× — and on its own it is not worth much. A series with a foothold behind it is, by construction, a later series. Netflix's country charts grew over the 265 weeks measured here, and Korean titles grew with them. The gap could be the foothold, or it could be nothing more than the calendar.

Killing the calendar: each series compared against itself

Each of these is one series compared against itself: on the day it charted, the countries where its company had already charted, against the countries where it had not. Same series, same week, same company — so age, title strength and company size cannot explain the gap.

Inside one series, on its own weeksChartedChancesRate
Countries where its company had already charted5,35016,02533.4%
Countries where it had not2,09924,5238.6%

It survives. 436 series could be measured this way, and the gap is 24.8 points — 3.9×, slightly wider than the raw figure rather than narrower. Whatever is happening is not the calendar, is not that one title was stronger than another, and is not that one company is bigger than another: the comparison never leaves a single title on a single set of weeks.

It is not the big companies carrying it

Company size (series that charted)CompaniesWith a footholdWithout
2–3 series4445%15.7%
4–6 series1545.2%12.7%
7–12 series451.3%12.3%
13 or more929.3%4.4%

Read the last two columns across every row: the gap is there in all four bands. The 13 or more band has the lowest rates on both sides — a company with a large catalogue has many series that chart in few places, which drags both columns down together without closing the gap between them.

Where it does not hold — 5 markets of 79

Splitting by country removes the last obvious objection: that a company's foothold countries are simply the countries that take Korean titles easily. Inside a single country that difference is gone. Of the 79 markets with enough chances on both sides to measure, 74 point the same way and 5 do not — CA, GB, IE, LT, US.

MarketWith a footholdWithout
CA1.1%3.4%
GB1.9%3.6%
IE1.9%2.8%
LT3.5%4.1%
US0%2.4%

Alphabetical, not ranked. Four of the 5 are English-speaking markets. We are not going to tell you why, because this data does not say — but a company planning on the strength of an earlier hit should know that the pattern it is planning on is the one place it has not been observed.

How much of the catalogue this covers

Companies with two or more series that charted72
Companies dropped — only one series ever charted59
Markets93
Weeks265
Chart rows read493,600

59 companies are not in any figure on this page. A company with one charting series has no "next" series, so the question cannot be asked of it. That is a real limit, not a rounding note: it means everything here describes companies that have already charted twice.

What we wrote from this data

Where these numbers come from, and what they cannot answer

How many companies fill half the shelf · How far titles travel · How we count