(Photo by Rachel Murray/Getty Images for Netflix)
Nobody says, “Hulu and chill.” There’s a reason for that. Say what you will about the amount of utter garbage available on Netflix, but overall, it’s still the virtually undisputed streaming leader in terms of both quality and quantity of content (and at a price point within reach for just about anyone).
Netflix hasn’t only provided our culture with new euphemisms and another reason to never leave the house. It’s also been an absolute gold mine for investors. Someone recently did the math on what would have happened if, from 2007 to the present, instead of spending the $10 or so per month it costs for a basic Netflix subscription, you had invested that same paltry $10 per month in Netflix stock. Your stock would be worth about $45,719.65 today. And just imagine how much higher that already sweet return would be if you’d also invested all the time you spent watching Netflix from 2007 to the present into doing something that produces income.
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While Netflix has a lot of different things going for it to account for the meteoric rise of its stock price, quality content is a major part of the streaming service puzzle. You don’t have to look much further than the wildly popular series Stranger Things to see why.
It’s got 80s nostalgia, it’s got plucky teens battling the forces of evil, it’s got a small-town hero cop outsmarting his snotty federal counterparts, and you’d better believe it’s got nerd culture callbacks. It’s also got a number of nominations and wins on the awards circuit. Stranger Things is a good show.
With Netflix though, it is very difficult to arbitrarily pin a dollar amount on how much a given series nets the company. Not only is Netflix notoriously reticent about releasing its own viewership information, its subscription business model just doesn’t work like that. You can’t attribute a certain number of subscriptions to just one series. But it is pretty safe to say that without solid flagship shows like Stranger Things, Netflix would have a lot fewer subscribers.
Though it is difficult to assign a specific dollar value to Stranger Things, there are some metrics which show it is definitely worth a lot to Netflix. For one thing, headliners Winona Ryder, David Harbour, and Millie Bobbie Brown are each reportedly earning around $350,000 per episode for season three. The other young stars of Stranger Things, who had salaries of $30,000 per episode for the first two seasons, will each be paid up to $250,000 per episode for the third season. Getting an eight-fold pay increase year-to-year is a pretty good indication of your value to an employer.
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With the viewership numbers, like I said, Netflix can be a bit of a black box when it comes to reporting on the habits of its own subscribers, but according to Nielsen, 15.8 million people viewed the first episode of season two within the first three days of its release. By way of comparison, just a couple months ago, the final episode of Game of Thrones attracted a record-smashing 19.3 million viewers upon its release. Since the second season of Stranger Things premiered in late 2017, the show has had legs, remaining one of the most-streamed series even as fans impatiently awaited new episodes. Given the unsinkable popularity of Stranger Things over time, I wouldn’t be surprised if the season three premier gives the GOT finale a run for its money.
So strap in, because Stranger Things season three is coming to a darkened room near you this July 4. Last time around, Nielsen reported that a full 361,000 people — more than one out of every thousand Americans — binged the entire nine-episode season two arc within 24 hours of its release. What are you really going to be doing at work on July 5 that is so important anyway? Go nuts. Housing a box of wine while you binge-watch an entire season of a beloved television show seems a lot more American to me than attending a dictatorial missile parade anyway. Happy Independence Day to you all, and please enjoy the show!
Jonathan Wolf is a litigation associate at a midsize, full-service Minnesota firm. He also teaches as an adjunct writing professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, has written for a wide variety of publications, and makes it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at [email protected].