The other night, my kids and I did a Good Burger double feature. We watched the original on Netflix, then pulled up Good Burger 2 on Paramount+. That’s when my 7-year-old son asked the obvious question: “Why is the first one on both?”
I explained the basics of content rights, how studios sometimes license out their own films to competitors. Then the very next day, Ampere Analysis dropped new data that put numbers to that exact conversation.
Nearly 40% of U.S. streaming titles are now available on two or more services, up from just 9% five years ago. Twenty-one percent appear on three or more. In Europe, the picture looks completely different: 13% in the UK, 8% in France. The U.S. isn’t dabbling in overlap. It’s built into the system.
What’s driving it:
- AVOD platforms like Tubi, Roku, and Plex chasing scale through non-exclusive libraries.
- SVODs licensing long-tail content for extra revenue.
- Consolidation bleeding catalogs together (HBO Max + Discovery+).
- Co-exclusive deals on premium shows (Netflix/HBO, Disney/AMC).
And it’s not just filler. Ampere notes that 41% of “premium” titles (critically rated 60 or higher) are now available on more than one service.
From Strategic Dilemma to Structural Reality
Last year, we wrote about the distribution dilemma: keep content exclusive to drive subscribers, or license it out for cash and reach. Back then, it was a choice.
Ampere’s numbers show that today, it is structural. Exclusivity is now the exception, not the rule. The “hybrid” model we described (windowing content, licensing after a period, blending exclusivity with distribution) is no longer a viable strategy. It is the operating system of the U.S. market.
The Sleeper Shift: IP as Yield
Catalog overlap isn’t just a licensing tactic. It’s IP yield optimization.
Good Burger on Paramount+ keeps fans inside the ecosystem. Good Burger on Netflix brings incremental licensing revenue and reach. Same asset, different yield streams. The same logic applies across SVOD, AVOD, FAST, and co-exclusives.
Exclusivity still matters for live sports, for originals, for the handful of titles that can truly anchor a platform. But it is no longer the baseline. Yield is.
The Streaming Wars Take
The fight is no longer over who owns the catalog. It is over who can extract the most lifetime value from it. Originals and live sports remain the only defensible exclusives. Everything else is being sliced, windowed, and shared in pursuit of yield.
If you are still treating your library purely as a moat, you are stuck in the old game. The winners are now those who treat IP as an asset class, monetized across every available model.What started with my son’s Good Burger question is the reality of the business: exclusivity is not dead, but it is no longer the foundation. Yield is the game.
