The Playbook · free · data
The Vertical Drama Playbook
The numbers behind vertical drama — the market, and what dominates our index of 307 series across 35 platforms and 17 countries. Free, factual, no opinion.
307series in the catalog
12tropes mapped
35platforms tracked
The market in numbers
source: industry reports~11 Md$global market 2025 → ~$14B in 2026
~950 Mdownloads (non-China apps, early 2025)
300 M+Hongguo MAU 🇨🇳 · ReelShort 70M+ · DramaBox 50M+
60–90 sper episode · 40 to 100 episodes per series
100–300 k$premium series budget ($10–50k for AI)
Genres in the index
share of the 307 seriesRomance142
Drama61
Fantasy47
Thriller32
Revenge25
The most frequent tropes
count across the indexBillionaire CEO53
Hidden Identity50
Revenge Glow-Up48
Enemies to Lovers47
Second Chance39
Forced Marriage37
Alpha Werewolf23
Secret Baby19
Royal Romance19
Mafia Boss11
Time Travel6
Survival4
The winning combos
trope pairs seen most often togetherHidden Identity + Revenge Glow-Up11
Billionaire CEO + Forced Marriage10
Secret Baby + Billionaire CEO9
Billionaire CEO + Hidden Identity8
Billionaire CEO + Revenge Glow-Up7
Mafia Boss + Forced Marriage5
The world map
series by country in the index🇸🇬 Singapore101
🇺🇸 USA86
🇮🇱 Israel38
🇨🇳 China12
🌎 Latin America12
🇮🇳 India10
🇰🇷 South Korea9
🇫🇷 France7
🌍 Africa / diaspora7
🇦🇪 Arab world5
🇺🇦 Ukraine5
🇵🇭 Philippines5
🇩🇪 Germany3
🇧🇷 Brazil3
🇯🇵 Japan2
🇳🇬 Nigeria1
🇳🇱 Netherlands1
The recurring cast
Read the tropes as characters and a cast emerges: the billionaire / CEO, the alpha (werewolf), the mafia boss — and opposite them the underdog heroine, humiliated then transformed, or the hidden heiress. The most frequent pairing: a powerful man and a woman the story frames as underestimated.
Explore the 307 series ranked by the public →Read: which tropes recur most (data analysis) →Method: market figures are sourced from public industry reports; catalog frequencies are computed from Vertical Clap Index's own tagged series (descriptive, not performance data). The bigger the index, the sharper the numbers.