Subscribing to a platform for a series and canceling at the end: an increasingly widespread practice

Young viewers are no longer really attached to the platforms, but to the series themselves. A new study reveals that the majority of Gen Z now subscribes just long enough to watch an event program… before leaving immediately.

Watch a series, cancel your subscription… then come back a few months later: for Gen Z, it has become a perfectly accepted habit.

A new study published by Dentsu and IGN Entertainment – conducted by Kantar and the University of Berkeley among 6,250 consumers in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia – reveals that 59% of Gen Z users subscribe and unsubscribe from streaming platforms just to follow a specific series or movie.

In other words: loyalty to platforms is almost dead among the youngest viewers.

The report, titled Generations In Play: 2026 Audience Insights Reportshows that young consumers are now “hunting” for event content. A highly anticipated series is coming? They subscribe. Is the season over? They cancel immediately.

For Brent Koning, manager at Dentsu, platforms must above all focus on strong franchises rather than an accumulation of new products.

“This shift isn’t necessarily about creating more new or original content, because we know that loyalty is actually based on intellectual properties that have a long lifespan. Stranger Things, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead…these are sagas that captivate viewers and keep them coming back. But we also see that when intellectual properties move from one format to another, they take viewers with them, so these sagas can also be reused,” he explains to Variety.

The study also reveals that a significant part of this generation now refuses to pay full price for certain entertainment. Nearly a third of the players surveyed prefer to test games via subscriptions rather than directly purchasing a title at full price.

But Hollywood can also see this as good news: Gen Z would today be the generation most attached to cinema in theaters. Young spectators are even 13% more likely than their elders to go see a film on its release weekend…