‘The Mandalorian’ Is The #3 Most-Streamed Show, According To Nielsen
Star Wars: The Mandalorian continues to be the killer app of Disney+, as viewings of the show’s first season and second season premiere rocketed the series to become the third-most viewed show on any streaming service last month.
Per Variety, The Mandalorian was #3 on the top ten of most-viewed shows in the week of October 26, 2020, with over a billion minutes of the series streamed in seven days. That made it the second-most streamed original program in that period behind The Queen’s Gambit at #1, and is just narrowly the third-most streamed show overall behind The Office (which is about to leave Netflix for Peacock – Comcast’s streaming service – and has consistently been popular on Netflix) at #2. It’s also the only series in the Top 10 to not be made by Netflix or streaming on their platform, showing the power of the Star Wars brand against a streaming market dominated by the trailblazer of internet streaming.
The full list is as follows:
- The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix) (7 episodes) – 1,850 minutes (millions)
- The Office (Netflix) (192 episodes) – 1,046 minutes (millions)
- The Mandalorian (Disney Plus) (9 episodes) – 1,032 minutes (millions)
- Schitt’s Creek (Netflix) (80 episodes) – 963 minutes (millions)
- Holidate (Netflix) (1 episode) – 654 minutes (millions)
- Grey’s Anatomy (Netflix) (361 episodes) – 624 minutes (millions)
- Criminal Minds (Netflix) (277 episodes) – 620 minutes (millions)
- NCIS (Netflix) (353 episodes) – 552 minutes (millions)
- The Haunting of Bly Manor (Netflix) (9 episodes) – 535 minutes (millions)
- Great British Baking Show (Netflix) (63 episodes) – 530 minutes (millions)
Of the Netflix shows (and movie) listed, only The Queen’s Gambit, Holidate, and The Haunting of Bly Manor are officially Netflix originals, while everything else comes from other creators licensing their content to Netflix. That just demonstrates the power of back catalogues on the world’s biggest streaming platform, particularly as new episodes join the streaming service for the first time. With that in mind, it’s worth reiterating that The Mandalorian is the #2 streaming original on this list, towering over everything but The Queen’s Gambit.
Where The Mandalorian is concerned, it should be noted that the figure only includes the show’s first nine episodes, which likely includes a healthy mix of people tuning into the premiere and several people binge-watching the first season (either again or for the first time) before watching said premiere. Other data that indicates that a massive amount of people tuned into the show’s second season premiere is a report from earlier in the month suggesting that the proportion of viewers watching The Mandalorian‘s second season launch was only .1% behind the proportion of viewers who watched Stranger Things 3‘s premiere – and it’s worth noting that the latter was released on a holiday weekend. (The number given for The Mandalorian‘s second season premiere was also 1.3% larger than the number for the week of the first season premiere, which saw two episodes released.) So that’s no small feat for the Disney+ show, since it’s on a service that still has less than half of Netflix’s total number of subscribers.
Had the entire season dropped in the last week of October instead of just the first episode, it’s possible that the show could have surpassed The Queen’s Gambit as the most-watched series of the week, since the total number of minutes viewed is directly related to the amount of content that’s available rather than just the audience size. Since Disney+ doesn’t invest nearly as much in original content as Netflix, they choose to release episodes in a weekly format instead – the fruits of which may be apparent in future Nielsen reports, depending on how many people catch new episodes on the day that they drop. That move ensures that subscribers who are after content on a weekly basis give them more payments, while seasonal viewers who only sign up for Disney+ when the entire season is available to watch before waiting to renew their subscriptions can still do so. Expect to see The Mandalorian stay in the Top 10 in subsequent weeks.
It will be interesting to see just how well Disney+ does as more must-see series are developed, as so far, the only Disney+’s original that had a similar kind of reach was the final season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, with it and The Mandalorian being the biggest saving graces for Disney+ on the original content front. That will likely change with the development of new Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm productions hitting the service in the next few years, starting with WandaVision in January, along with other high-profile content like Pixar’s movie Soul hitting the service this Christmas. With Disney+ as the company’s biggest focus right now, don’t be shocked if we learn about a lot of new content hitting the streaming service in the next year or two, particularly in a world where Disney’s other business venues have been impacted by an ongoing pandemic.
The Mandalorian is streaming exclusively on Disney+, with the first season completed and a second season in progress. A third season is currently being written by Jon Favreau and is in pre-production for a hopeful 2021 release window, while actor Giancarlo Esposito has indicated that there are plans for at least four seasons.
Grant has been a fan of Star Wars for as long as he can remember, having seen every movie on the big screen. When he’s not hard at work with his college studies, he keeps himself busy by reporting on all kinds of Star Wars news for SWNN and general movie news on the sister site, Movie News Net. He served as a frequent commentator on SWNN’s The Resistance Broadcast.
