With Netflix finishing the third quarter with just over 73 million subscribers in the U.S., an unrivaled domestic user base, Nielsen’s recently introduced weekly ranker of the most consumed shows from the biggest SVOD services usually boils down to a snapshot of what was popular on Netflix a month ago.
But Disney Plus’s season two premiere of The Mandalorian finished the week ending Nov. 1 in a big way, ranking third on Nielsen’s list with 1.023 million minutes of streaming measured by the research company. It was the strongest performance in the Nielsen ranker by a non-Netflix show.
On several occasions, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and Disney Plus have cracked the top 10, but appearances by the other major U.S. subscription streaming services have been sporadic. Amazon hit No. 3 for the week ending Sept. 6 with the season-two debut of The Boys capturing 891 million minutes of streaming. That week was the only other time Disney Plus cracked the list, with the debut of Mulan—a $30 premium purchase for Disney Plus subscribers—capturing 525 million minutes of viewing time and finishing in 10th place.
Disney reported that it’s one-year-old SVOD platform finished Q3 with 73 million users worldwide. It’s unclear as to how many it has in North America right now, but suffice it to say it’s not yet at a Netflix level. That makes the boffo viewer number put up by The Mandalorian all the more impressive.
For the week ending Nov. 1, the “Star Wars” themed show was only beaten out by Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit, which the No. 1 streaming service claims is its best performing limited series of all time, and The Office, which has 195 episodes routinely ranking in Nielsen’s top 10, at least until the series exits Netflix at the end of the year.
