Star Trek or Star Wars? Fans Say “Both”

How Comic-Con Fandoms Overlap. Image courtesy of Morning Consult.

So listen, you’re a Star Trek fan, right? What a coincidence! So am I! But...what else are you into? According to a study by The Morning Consult and The Hollywood Reporter, chances are you’re into Star Wars too.

A tip of the hat to StarTrek.com for this story. They highlighted it on their website this week, which is good, because I completely missed it back in July. Morning Consult, a survey firm, teamed up with The Hollywood Reporter to ask 2,200 U.S. adults what popular franchises they were fans of. Responses included things like “Marvel”, “Fortnight”, “Harry Potter”, and of course, “Star Trek”. Then they charted the responses on a grid to determine how much one fandom intersects with another.

The results revealed possible avenues by which creators could appeal to wider audiences in their marketing. Quoting the piece, “The data shows that Marvel and Star Wars have the biggest overlap with other fandoms. But while video game Fortnite was at the bottom of the list in popularity — and subsequently last in crossover appeal — it has been able to capitalize on fandom overlap through collaboration with more popular franchises. [...] According to Gene Del Vecchio, an adjunct professor of marketing at the University of Southern California and author of ‘Creating Blockbusters,’ knowledge of where these fandoms cross over can help studios determine how to market upcoming releases. Beyond tailoring trailers to similar movies — for example, showing a preview for the latest ‘Star Wars’ film before a new Marvel release — executives can also use fandoms for social media targeting.”

But what does the data tell us about Star Trek fans? In this study, in terms of fandom size, Star Trek fell right in the middle. It’s bigger than Game of Thrones, for instance, but smaller than Harry Potter. Star Trek fans were likely to say that they were also fans of Marvel, DC and Lord of the Rings. Perhaps surprisingly though, the fandom that a full 88% of Star Trek fans said they were also a fan of...was Star Wars.

As for other fandoms being Star Trek fans, Doctor Who fans were most likely to profess love for Trek as well, followed by Lord of the Rings, and again, Star Wars. One hopes these figures will help answer the age-old question, “Star Trek vs. Star Wars?” Because the answer seems to be “both”.