Welcome to What I’m Hearing+, back in Brooklyn where I’m celebrating the holiday at a screening of Eli Roth’s slasher pic Thanksgiving and decorating the Christmas tree.

Tonight, an empirical look at a seasonal question: How important are holiday movies to streaming platforms? But first…

• Netflix’s Live Sports Questionnaire: Netflix made its foray into live sports this week with an eight-hole, two-hour “celebrity” golf tournament, in Las Vegas, starring a couple F1 drivers from its hit Drive to Survive docuseries, paired up with pro golfers from Full Swing. Was it successful? Depends on who you ask. There were no major glitches—an improvement over the live Love Is Blind debacle—but the event lacked a few key ingredients of good sportcasts: strong commentators, proper use of informational banners, actual stakes, etcetera.

  In the lead-up to the tournament, Netflix called it an “experiment”—framing that was reinforced by a questionnaire sent to some subscribers. Among the survey questions were whether “live sports and events coming from Netflix makes sense,” and, “In the future, what other types of live offerings would you be interested in watching on Netflix?” Suggested answers included news specials, reunion episodes of popular shows, sports broadcasts, full concerts, stand-up comedy, awards shows, and live specials such as a New Year’s Eve show.

  If Netflix goes down this road, reunion specials might be a relatively light lift. But real, live sports programming—not just celebrity golf cups—would require much more work. League rights would be massively expensive, too, even for more limited packages, like the NBA’s new in-season tournament, a reported target, though Netflix denies it is interested. Netflix could outsource production until it has the infrastructure, as Amazon has done with NBC for Thursday Night Football, but these are still meaningful investments—even for Netflix.

  Netflix’s scale provides obvious strategic advantages if it chooses to air more live events. The service has about 65 million domestic subscribers and nearly 250 million globally, with around 80 percent of quarterly additions coming from overseas. The difficulty, however, is in finding ways to solve the economic equation for all (or at least very many) subscribers, which means lots of testing and learning before signing a one-off streaming deal for an event like the Golden Globes—Netflix already has the SAG Awards, after all—or committing to a multiyear league deal.

  In any case, Netflix seemingly understands that it needs to integrate sports into its business going forward; what remains unclear is what that integration looks like. Does Netflix remain a master of sports documentaries, which some analysts have suggested, or does it actually dive into live sports after its “experimentation”? There’s an industrial logic here, given the importance of its advertising tier to future growth and the need among advertisers for high-volume, engaged audiences. But any live broadcast opportunity would likely need global appeal for the investment to make sense. (Hence the reason why Apple’s Eddy Cue went all-in on MLS and Bob Iger built much of Disney+’s initial strategy around Indian cricket rights.) With $6.5 billion in projected free cash flow, Netflix has the unique ability to chart its own future. Sports will almost certainly play a role, somehow. Just don’t expect the NBA playoffs anytime soon.

Of course, more views doesn’t necessarily equal more money for streamers. The entire industry is now embracing advertising, but CPMs are still small potatoes compared to subscriptions. Obviously, more people are streaming during the holidays because more people are at home. The real revenue question is whether hokey movie franchises like Netflix’s A Christmas Prince, or Warners/Max classics like Elf—not to mention the thousands of hours of Hallmark slop you can now binge on Peacock—are actually driving acquisition and/or retention. Seasonal programming was always a must-have on traditional pay TV… but does it really move the needle on streaming?

The rewards aren’t distributed equally. Max, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Video recorded the strongest average demand for holiday films between November and January, according to Parrot Analytics, where I work as director of strategy. Those three winners were followed by Tubi, Disney+, and Peacock; then Apple TV+ and Paramount+ pulling up the rear. What needs further evaluation is whether not having holiday programming negatively impacted overall demand in that period, and how much having more holiday programming would have benefitted both of the laggards. The percentage of total demand these titles represented against the entire catalog, however, accounted for less than 10 percent of overall demand.

Then, of course, there’s the question of which titles are driving the most viewership and demand. The winners are not surprising: The Nightmare Before Christmas, Home Alone, The Grinch, and Die Hard were some of the most in-demand movies during the 2022 holiday season. This is reflected in the Nielsen data, too. Home Alone was watched for more than 2.8 billion total minutes on Disney+ between the weeks of Nov. 27 and Dec. 25. The Santa Clauses, which saw Tim Allen reprise his iconic film role in a Disney+ series, was streamed for more than 1.9 billion minutes.

Netflix’s top 10 list tells an even more interesting, platform-specific story. During Thanksgiving week, holiday movies typically take up four slots in the global top 10, rising to five between late November and early December. In the final weeks before Christmas, that number tops out at seven of 10, before dropping down to three in the week between Christmas and New Year’s. It looks like it’ll be no different this year, as a holiday movie (Best! Christmas! Ever!) has already topped Netflix’s top 10 list.

It’s also telling to note the types of films that global subscribers are watching that aren’t represented in third-party viewership metrics. Originals like The Noel Diary, Falling for Christmas, and Scrooge: A Christmas Carol stayed on the weekly global top 10 list for a minimum of three consecutive weeks, while tie-ins including A Bad Moms Christmas and The Boss Baby: Christmas Bonus only stayed for one week.

It’s a lot to parse, but three conclusions are clear. First, audiences are strongly drawn to Hallmark-style fare. So it’s not worth spending money on I.P. tie-ins when cheaper films, shot with new actors or those no longer at the peak of their career, may pay off at a much higher rate. Also, holiday films can ease the marketing and customer acquisition costs that are typically associated with newer content. Lastly, the commercial opportunity here is only just presenting itself: The fact that holiday entertainment relies on a compressed period presents lucrative, creative ways to connect advertisers with the viewers they so desperately want to reach, on platforms they know audiences are flocking to in droves.

There are three core streaming value drivers: acquisition, retention, and engagement (or referral value), which is the key metric for a platform’s usage and value perception. Acquisition and retention connect directly to the bottom line: A customer either chooses to spend $15 a month, or chooses to continue spending $15 a month rather than cancel. Referral value, however, reflects the health of a platform’s overall proposition: Does that title drive audiences to another title on the platform, instead of losing their attention to a competitor?

While social video solved this through algorithmic recommendations and autoplay—come to YouTube for a video on The Holdovers, watch a 15-minute essay on Alexander Payne’s filmography—streamers have not had as easy a time. The best they can do is pair broad-appeal programming with niche interests, based on audience profiles, in order to make their content investment work as efficiently as possible. But the recommendation engine is particularly effective during the holidays, when seasonal content becomes a gateway to the rest of the catalog.

This is crucial given that streamers exist in a state of perpetual churn. The cost of customer acquisition requires a significant marketing budget. This becomes increasingly difficult when projects are increasingly expensive to make, and it’s impossible to market them all in a similar fashion. Finding ways to produce cheaper fare, while increasing engagement inside each platform, is top of mind for every company. Seasonal programming that ties into niche fare helps with some of that planning.

Recently, Vulture journalist (and my friend) Joe Adalian spoke with the head of Hallmark Media programming, Lisa Hamilton Daly, about the company’s lucrative holiday slate. Daly emphasized the importance of capturing “Christmas in every frame,” leaning into the coziness of the season. The phrase is also a dog whistle for advertisers: Hallmark is estimated to bring in $350 million in advertising revenue annually based on its controversy-free Christmas films, according to third-party estimates.

Streaming platforms are constantly trying to prove to advertisers that they actually have strong potential impact and reach; companies publicly report subscriber numbers, but engagement on ad-supported tiers is less known. It’s a work in progress: Netflix is growing its ad tier, but less than 6 percent of its U.S. customers take ads, according to Antenna. (As of Q1, 50 percent of Hulu, Peacock, and Max subscribers are on ad-supported tiers, according to Antenna.) What Netflix and other streamers can deliver, however, is brand safety and a younger, engaged audience. And there’s nothing more advertiser-friendly than the holidays—people drinking hot chocolate, traveling, buying gifts, etcetera—“in every frame.”

Indeed, ad impressions can increase by 50 percent during the holiday period, according to third-party estimates, with conversion rates increasing by up to 60 percent. Holiday programming can be a relatively cheap, brand-bolstering advertisement haven that boosts the rest of the business for several months. Hallmark may have the cable audience cornered, but companies like Netflix are pushing to claim that ad market share.