The Playbook · free · data
The Vertical Drama Playbook
The numbers behind vertical drama — the market, and what dominates our index of 249 series across 24 platforms and 15 countries. Free, factual, no opinion.
249series in the catalog
12tropes mapped
24platforms 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 249 seriesRomance112
Drama54
Fantasy39
Thriller26
Revenge18
The most frequent tropes
count across the indexRevenge Glow-Up40
Hidden Identity40
Billionaire CEO35
Enemies to Lovers33
Second Chance32
Forced Marriage28
Alpha Werewolf20
Royal Romance17
Secret Baby13
Mafia Boss10
Time Travel5
Survival3
The winning combos
trope pairs seen most often togetherHidden Identity + Revenge Glow-Up7
Billionaire CEO + Hidden Identity6
Billionaire CEO + Forced Marriage6
Billionaire CEO + Revenge Glow-Up5
Secret Baby + Billionaire CEO5
Alpha Werewolf + Revenge Glow-Up4
The world map
series by country in the index🇸🇬 Singapore88
🇺🇸 USA57
🇮🇱 Israel38
🇨🇳 China12
🌎 Latin America12
🇮🇳 India7
🌍 Africa / diaspora7
🇰🇷 South Korea6
🇦🇪 Arab world5
🇵🇭 Philippines5
🇫🇷 France4
🇩🇪 Germany3
🇯🇵 Japan2
🇺🇦 Ukraine2
🇳🇬 Nigeria1
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 249 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.