Spider-Man’s Popularity Is A Streaming Strength

Spider-Man is Marvel’s most popular character, but the studio arm does not own the film rights. It’s only able to include the wall crawler in recent Marvel Cinematic Universe entries due to a deal with Sony (where Marvel sold the rights over two decades ago).

Since Sony doesn’t have its own streaming service, though, that also makes Spidey an incredibly valuable free agent in an environment where subscriber numbers have been plateauing and every service is looking for ways to retain domestic audiences.

And to-date, Sony has been able to cash in considerably as a result. In 2021, the studio signed separate deals with Netflix (pay-1 movie window exclusivity) and Disney (pay-2) totaling a rumored $3 billion for rights to stream Sony’s films. But those arrangements expire by the end of 2026, which will lead to yet another bidding war for its movie library — and specifically the Spider-Man movies — that Sony can profit from again.

Not bad considering Sony once spent just $7 million to acquire the film rights to Spider-Man and related characters and made it back immediately with the first movie in 2002.

The character’s popularity also keeps climbing, as data from Tubular Labs sheds further light on.

(from Tubular Labs)

Over the last three years, there have been 2.7 million YouTube video uploads related to Spider-Man, totaling over 189 billion views. And views for Spider-Man videos have topped 1.20 billion every week since Nov. 15-21, 2021 – peaking the first week of June 2023 at 2.34 billion (with reactions to Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse).

While Marvel and Sony contribute plenty of Spidey-related videos, a much larger share of views come from user-generated content, which speaks to the fan popularity of the character (especially among younger people). That’s something that bodes well for streaming services that pay for the rights to Spidey’s films… but it’s particularly important for Sony, which can use that growing interest in an already-popular character as a cash register.

Though Disney still profits plenty from Spider-Man due to cartoons, comics, merchandise, etc., Sony gets to ride that wave to sell Playstation games, make more movies (which it has to in order to keep the character license) and make increasingly more money on these streaming window deals.

Disney+ also sort of “needs” Spider-Man more than streaming competitors do, in order to plug holes in its library of MCU content, so Netflix knows it can ask for more. Other streamers also understand that having any of the eight live-action Spidey films or two (so far) animated Spider-Verse films brings with it increased audience interest, however. So Sony ends up the beneficiaries of a potential bidding war on top of all of this.

Considering Sony’s streaming free agency was once seen as a disadvantage in the streaming wars, it’s funny how that dynamic is now flipped. Sony is positioned incredibly well both for now and in the future, especially due to its… “amazing” superhero license.