The global fan is one of those stories I’m beginning to lose faith in, like the conversion funnel and the pursuit of happiness.
The global fan exists because Netflix, Amazon and Apple want it to exist. And for as along as they want it to exist, the rights holders will play along.
At Sportel last year, Marissa Banu-Lawrence of Fox Sports put it well (on a very good APAC panel hosted by Imran Yusuf of SportBusiness): Australia is hyper localised. Even within Oz you have to go state by state. Australian sports fans are nuts for NRL,
Why has Mr. Beast’s Beast Games underperformed on Amazon despite $100 million budget, why did The Sidemen drop from 73 million YouTube views to 2.4 million on Netflix, why did Pop the Balloon see similar declines?
The mistake: assuming top-tier creator success represents the average outcome when creators migrate platforms. It’s the ceiling, not the floor. Most creators moving to streaming miss the charts entirely. The best performers are acquisitions like The Amazing Digital Circus—where Netflix paid bargain prices after creators shouldered all risk.
