The Demographics Of Star Wars Fans

I have written about surveys and polls that aim to shed light on the demographics of Star Wars fans before. The surveys I quoted all more or less agree that about 40% of the fans are women. And actual movie attendance data by the MPAA supports this, the three movies in their report: The Force Awakens, Rogue One and The Last Jedi were watched by approx. 40% women. However, all of these surveys and polls are US only. But now a new analysis by Parrot Analytics, via Yahoo (who repost a The Wrap article hidden behind a paywall), has surfaced that takes a look at the all time global (so not just the US) demographics of Star Wars fans. They compare Star Wars to Marvel to see where the differences are. And the findings are very interesting! Click through for more!

Star Wars fans in the wild

Ok, so let’s dive right in. One disclaimer: I cannot tell you anything about the methods used by Parrot Analytics, they do analyze, among other things, engagement on social media, in the past I found some of their reports somewhat dubious, especially when they post streaming show rankings that entirely contradict the Nielsen charts, so keep that in mind. Still, I think this is interesting enough and warrants a look!

Ok, so here is the chart that was created using a tool Parrot Analytics offers paying customers, the age and gender distribution of the viewership of various Star Wars and Marvel movies and shows, all time, global, so not just the US.

Click to enlarge. Source: The Wrap via Yahoo

What can we see here? On the x-axis we have gender distribution, the more left something is the more men watch it. On the y-axis is the age distribution, the further up the older your audience is.

If we just look at all the color coded dots we see immediately how Star Wars skews much older than Marvel, most movies are watched by people aged 30+, whereas Marvel movies are mostly watched by younger people. Which comes as no surprise given how the OT generation is still around and the PT generation is now in their 30s as well. Which also means the sequels didn’t add all that many new and young fans.

A few interesting things of note here: while Agent Carter is the rare series that skews predominantly female with Loki also being watched by comparatively many women, having a male or female main character is not indicative of what audience you will get.

Echo, a series with a female protagonist, a young Native American woman who is also an amputee and deaf (Echo was DEI – the Series) had more than 80% male viewers. When the showrunner and Marvel probably aimed at girls instead. In fact, the same thing happened with The Marvels and more recently Furiosa, more than 70% of the audience is male.

Star Wars has not a single show or movie where females dominate, The Mandalorian has a 62/38% split, which comes close to the 40% female fans reported in other surveys or polls.

Next thing to have a relatively large female audience is A New Hope, 63/37% split.

But virtually almost all other shows or movies have a 70+% male audience. Sadly, this chart does not label the one other Star Wars movie with a somewhat larger female audience share, my guess is it could be The Force Awakens.

In fact, according to this the gender ratio average for the movies is 70% men vs 30% women. The Disney+ Star Wars show series have about 74% men vs 26% women. So three thirds of the viewership are male. No matter what.

Now I also need to point out that the theater attendance statistics by the MPAA directly contradict Parrot Analytics here, they show a larger percentage of women, always around 40%. I can only make assumptions here but the chart says “global, all time”, which implies home media users and streaming are all included here and maybe this will skew things more towards the male demographic, as they may be more inclined to rewatch movies at home or to watch the various Star Wars shows on Disney+. And the gender distribution of Star Wars fans outside the US may be different as well, explaining why the global all time data is so different from what the MPAA USA only reports tell us.

So what else can we say? Kathleen Kennedy was apparently not wrong when she said the Star Wars fandom is “male dominated”, but it also shows how chasing a female audience may be a fool’s errand and that it’s not even the gender of your main character that has an actual effect here. Tom Hiddleston is probably just very popular with females, that is, the actor. And maybe Hayley Atwell is just someone other women happen to like. They definitely did not care all that much about the female, deaf amputee in Echo, or Furiosa, or Captain Marvel or literally any of the female characters in any of the Star Wars Disney+ shows. It also has to be noted that Peggy Carter was not a “girlboss” character and is one of the very, very few female characters in Marvel or Star Wars to have a positive romantic relationship with a man (Steve Rogers played by Chris Evans), whereas most of the other female leads in the other shows or movies are often perceived as girlboss characters and almost always are single and not interested in romance at all, maybe, just a suggestion, women like romance? In fact, Loki season 1 had a romance angle as well. Maybe women (straight women at least) do not like aromantic girlbosses? There must be some reason they mostly don’t bother to watch the shows or movies. And the only Star Wars show with a higher percentage of women in the audience was The Mandalorian, which has a male lead and cute green toddler women may have motherly feelings about or just find “cute”.

In my opinion Disney, all of Hollywood, should take a close look at this data. Chasing a female audience you almost always do not have may be pointless. I do wonder how The Acolyte will skew, will it have more female viewers? Or will it be more like Echo? That only the most hardcore of hardcore fans will ever bother to watch it, and those are predominantly male. If The Marvels or Furiosa tell us anything then that this is a very likely option. But even Captain Marvel had a mostly male audience: 57% were male according to the MPAA report from 2019. And it probably will skew more male even if you include home media and streaming. As do the Star Wars movies, at least according to Parrot Analytics.

The most basic question then is this: why not cater to the audience you have, instead of chasing an audience you don’t have? Also, men are more likely to watch Marvel or Star Wars content with a female lead than women. Disney should think long and hard about that.

Also, age is a real issue for Star Wars. The fandom skews older than most others. This explains why they desperately try to appeal to Gen Z and kids. But at least according to Parrot Analytics the success is moderate at best, basically everything Star Wars on Disney+ has between 40-60% in the 30+ demographic, even the various Marvel shows have this same trend, only the Marvel movies skew younger. Which can mean only one thing: younger people have much less interest in Disney+ Or at least in the Marvel offerings on that platform.

What do you think? Do you feel Disney and here Lucasfilm in particular is serving the roughly 70% male audience on Disney+ and the 30+ age demographic? Or are they trying to make things for an audience they do not have?

Ultimately representation, as far as gender is concerned, does not seem to make any difference at all. Women will not tune in just because a woman is the lead character. In fact, some of the things with the highest share of men among the audience have female leads. Only Peggy Carter is a female lead in a show watched by mostly women. And that may be down to Hayley Atwell (who is gorgeous, charismatic and likable) or the general quality of the series. Echo however was niche, super niche, so only super hardcore fans ever bothered to even tune in… and those hardcore fans are: predominantly male, no matter if it’s Star Wars or Marvel. And the one niche movie Star Wars has, Solo, shows the exact same trend, 80% male audience (despite having a romance element). And Disney+ average for all the Star Wars shows is 74% male. Sadly, the chart does not tell us what Star Wars series had an 80% male audience share. Maybe it was Ahsoka of all things. But even if not, according to the data here the series with an almost all female cast still had in excess of 70% male viewers on Disney+.

I am not sure Lucasfilm will like that. And I am not sure why Lucasfilm is still trying so hard to gain a female audience with more recent shows. They simply do not have, no matter what they try. I hope we will get demographic data for The Acolyte. Will it be like Echo? Or not?

And one last thing; this should also disspell the idea that men (male Star Wars or Marvel fans, to be precise) are sexist who do not want to watch female lead movies or shows. Because they do. In fact, they do so a LOT more than women. Which is funny. I really wonder what Kathleen Kennedy would have to say about that. Maybe women simply dislike what is dubbed the “girlboss” character a lot more than men? Which would be even funnier. I do hope some of our rare female commenters can share their opinions here.

Original article with the data on The Wrap (paywall)
Yahoo repost of the article (free)

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