Case study · 52 franchises scored
LootSignal
The question the system answers
Which entertainment franchises deserve merchandise and licensing investment next — and in what order?
Scope
LootSignal is an internally-built research system that scores 52 entertainment franchises across seven weighted dimensions, so a licensing or merchandising decision starts from a comparable, current ranking instead of a one-off deck.
Data and research used
- Search and interest trend dataWeekly refresh
Public interest signals, normalized per franchise.
- Social audience and engagement signalsWeekly refresh
Fandom size and engagement direction, not raw follower counts.
- Marketplace listing and pricing dataWeekly refresh
Merchandise breadth, price points, and sell-through proxies.
- Release and licensing calendarsMonthly refresh
Upcoming content that moves demand windows.
- Category market researchQuarterly
Licensed category-level context for whitespace estimates.
What was not available
Rights-holder internal sales data was not available and is not modeled. Where a dimension depends on it (pricing power in particular), the score uses marketplace proxies and is flagged at lower confidence.
The scoring model
The model is a weighted sum with explicit, versioned weights. Nothing about it is hidden — that is the point.
franchise_score = Σ (dimension_score_i × weight_i) where Σ weight_i = 1 dimension_score_i ∈ [0,100], normalized within the 52-franchise set weights are explicit, adjustable, and versioned with each scoring run
Try the weighting yourself
Ten sample rows, three of the seven dimensions. Move a weight and watch the ranking respond — this is the same mechanic the full system runs across 52 franchises.
- 01Sample J74.2
- 02Sample C70.2
- 03Sample G66.4
- 04Sample D65.7
- 05Sample E61.2
- 06Sample I57.4
- 07Sample F56.7
- 08Sample B53.4
- 09Sample H47.7
- 10Sample A43.7
Features shipped
- Ranked franchise table with adjustable dimension weights
- Side-by-side franchise comparisons
- Demand-window forecasts tied to release calendars
- Category benchmarks
- Methodology documentation inside the product
- A data room with source lineage per figure
Decisions supported
- Which three franchises to pitch for licensed merchandise next quarter
- Which existing lines to expand, hold, or wind down
- When to time a launch against a franchise's next content window
- Which whitespace categories justify a licensing conversation
Limitations and assumptions
- Scores are relative within the tracked set of 52 franchises; adding franchises re-normalizes the field.
- Pricing-power scores rely on marketplace proxies, not rights-holder sales data, and carry medium confidence at best.
- Demand-window forecasts assume announced release dates hold; slips are ingested on the next refresh, not predicted.
- The model ranks opportunities — it does not model licensing negotiation outcomes or contract economics.