Riot’s $250 Million ‘Arcane’ TV Series Was a Netflix Hit, Financial Miss
‘Arcane’ drew a big audience, but didn’t bring in enough gaming revenue
Firstly, fuck Bloomberg.
Anyhow, the show is a classic, "get what you pay for." It’s one of the most well regarded animations. How can you expect to recoup that money on a streaming service? Are they stupid?
It seems that Netflix paid a flat rate of $3 million per episode for rights to stream the show. I wonder how much their internal accountants estimate that they made off of it. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a lot more than that.
For reference, Stranger Things season 1 was estimated to cost $6 million per episode, with season 4 ballooning to an estimated $30 million per episode. I'm not suggesting that Arcane was worth that much to them. Adult oriented animation based on a video game is a pretty niche genre. But, I think it's safe to say that netflix came out way ahead on this deal.
Also, regarding the claim in the lede: can confirm. Despite thoroughly enjoying both seasons of Arcane, I was never even a little bit tempted to start playing LOL. That game has a well-earned reputation, and no amount of good television is going to change it.
I've never played the game before, but I watched the whole show. It is the best TV I've seen since The Last of Us, much better than Stranger Things. It's brilliant animation.
It got me to buy the convergence collector’s edition. I was going to buy more LoL spinoff games, but it seems they are closing up shop on their other games.
Capitalists will never think anything makes enough money.
What a dumb article. My middle aged, non-gamer, cousin took up Legends of Runeterra because of Arcane. The Uniqlo Arcane shirts sold out in a matter of hours at my location. I don't play League but I play the spin-offs, mainly because of Arcane. I doubt I am unique.
Oh shut up. It's on Netflix. They will account for it however they want. It was obviously hugely successful, but I guess they want to cheat some talent out of royalties, so "it actually lost money".
Clueless to Riot's whole business model. Their game cosmetics literally print money. Their projects like Arcane, and their whole esports ecosystem they fund aren't intended to make money on their own, they function as extremely high budget ads for their games.
Arcane slaps 👏
