That’s right, they’ve just released the new Netflix viewing stats in a big spreadsheet so it’s time to have a look. We are of course mainly interested in the unscripted competition stuff, but it’s worth having a look at some other things that caught our eye. The top show of the six months in terms of effective viewership (which is just hours viewed divided by runtime) is Adolescence, watched 144.8m times worldwide with 555.1m hours clocked up followed by series two of Squid Game with 117.3m views and 840.3m hours to add to the 619.9m to add from the one week in December it was out gives it a grand total of about 1,469.9m hours total (give or take some rounding as Netflix numbers are only given to the nearest 100k) gives it total viewership of about 205m, series three of Squid Game clocked up 438m hours and 71.5m views in its four days, and everyone who missed out on series 1 of Squid Game first time round added a further 348.9m hrs and 42m views, but as Netflix Stats don’t go as far back as 2021 any total numbers gleaned are just hearsay.
Alright, so that’s just a dump of big numbers, what about the shows we’re interested in? As ever these numbers come with caveats – they only run from Jan 1st to June 30th so shows earlier in this sequence are going to have had longer to build up a figure, those towards the end might only have had a few weeks or days. Secondly not all shows are available worldwide which lowers their potential, but Netflix will be interested in seeing how they’ve done in certain markets so these figures are not be all and end all. Finally, the thing with “effective views” is that it’s just one number divided by another, it does not take into account people who give up on a show partway through or indeed people who rewatch a show. Got it? Good.
In line with previous episodes, it’s show title in bold, date of release, hours viewed, effective viewers. 407 TV series to go through, here are the ones we’re interested in (includes some scripted that might be of interest):
Love is Blind Germany S1 – 3/1/25 – 41m, 5m
Single’s Inferno S4 – 14/1/25 – 128.3m, 8.2m
Celebrity Bear Hunt S1 – 5/2/25 – 26.7m, 3.7m
Love is Blind S8 – 14/2/25 – 220.1m, 13.4m
Too Hot to Handle Germany S2 – 18/2/25 – 18.8m, 3.1m
Temptation Island S1 – 12/3/25 – 99.3m, 10.6m
Love is Blind Sweden S2 – 13/3/25 – 25.3m, 2.5m
Inside S2 – 17/3/25 – 17.5m, 2.4m
Million Dollar Secret 26/3/25 – 78.6m, 11.1m
Pop the Balloon Live – I’m not adding them all up, the first one got 3.2m views, the last one 600k, so.
Battle Camp – 23/4/25 – 55.5m, 6.3m
The Devil’s Plan S2 – 6/5/25 – 61.3m, 3.4m
Bet S1 – 15/5/25 – 78.9m, 13.6m
Too Hot to Handle Spain – 13/6/25 – 14.6m, 2.5m
The Ultimatum: Queer Love S2 – 25/6/25 – 10.2m, 1.7m
Dominated by dating shows rather but clearly Love is Blind and Single’s Inferno remain monsters. Towards the competition-y end, Celeb Bear Hunt was actually quite fun and deserved better I think, but I can definitely understand why they didn’t recommission – quite far off the BARB Top 50 despite the noise I understand, and if it’s not even a hit here… . Million Dollar Secret has been renewed and with good reason evidently, those are good Netflix second-tier reality numbers, also great to see series two of The Devil’s Plan doing well – the numbers are not quite as good as the first time around (and that added another 16m hrs presumably from people who watched the second one first and/or Genius Game fans evidently, taking it over 100m hrs) but that’s good engagement for quite a specifically cultural show, would rate its chances of a third. Battle Camp is interesting, Netflix has renewed shows with those sorts of numbers in the past but I do wonder if they were hoping for a bit more with the successful shows attached. Cusp-y erring on second chance with more cross-promo ops I reckon.
Looking at stuff from last year, there are certain shows that we belive have been cancelled – The Mole S2 added a further 10.5m hrs to bring up to a little over 56m hrs and about 7m views – Battle Camp‘s at a similar level. The Circle isn’t on Netflix’s upcoming reality plate, S7 added a further 6.7m hrs bringing it up to just under 46m hrs which might explain that. Outlast which is coming back added a further 12.9m hrs taking it to 61.9m and almost 9.5m views. Love is Blind UK added a further 15.1m hrs come up to 156.9m.
Cheat: Unfinished Business with Amanda Holden is already three times more popular than Cheat with Danny Dyer. And “Oh that’s quite interesting” news, series 1 of 3%, the drama series that we banged on about some time ago, added another half a mill views the last six months for fans of eliminatory procedural dramas, although the other series haven’t had as much of an uplift so presumably everyone else gave up when it became more about the world than the procedure as well.
Is there anything interesting you’ve spotted?
Edit: Thanks to C for pointing out the Inside number, this was backed by The Sidemen and is not great. The first series was also uploaded a month later (20/4/25) and acheived only 2.1m hrs, but that was originally uploaded to Youtube in 2024 so probably not worth reading much into.
Worth noting the TDP number might be affected by it being released quite late in the stats window, I would expect it to catch up to S1 in January.
Reasonable, the first series had almost three months to register it’s initial numbers. TDP2 is five hours longer though, so its effective viewership will struggle more.
Not seen it noted anywhere else but Inside: Season 1 all the way down on 2.1m total hours (200k viewers). At the time this seemed to have done OK (certainly relative to Bear Hunt or Cheat).
Great spot, will add in a bit thanks.
Edit: Looking at the stats, Inside Season one released 20th April 2.1m but presumably this was the one on Youtube first? Inside Season 2 released on 17th March did 17.5m hrs, 2.4m viewers.
I wasn’t expecting much from Battle Camp but had a long train ride so downloaded for the journey and I ended up really enjoying it. Very well thought out format, decent challenges, but it was really well cast. I guess they knew what they were getting with the players chosen, having already been on shows.