“Tiger King” drew more viewers in the U.S. in its first 10 days on Netflix than “Stranger Things 2” got over that same post-launch time span, according to Nielsen’s SVOD Content Ratings.
The Netflix docuseries following the bizarre life of former tiger zoo owner Joe Exotic and several other big cat owners in the U.S. scored an average-minute audience of 19 million U.S. viewers in the first 10 days after its March 20 launch, besting the 17.5 million put up by “Stranger Things 2” (Oct. 27, 2017) and nearly matching the 20.5 million earned by “Stranger Things 3” (July 4, 2019) in their same post-premiere time frames.
Over its launch weekend alone, “Tiger King” brought in an average-minute audience of almost 2.4 million.
We should note here that “Tiger King” premiered while Americans are under stay-at-home orders due to the coronavirus pandemic, which was obviously not the situation for the respective launches of “Stranger Things 2” and “Stranger Things 3.”
In terms of unique viewers, so those who watched at least a few minutes of the show, “Tiger King” reached 34.3 million people over its first 10 days, compared to 31.2 million for “Stranger Things 2” and 36.3 million for “Stranger Things 3.”
But “Tiger King” didn’t come in roaring right away.
According to Nielsen, the docuseries had an average minute audience of 280,000 U.S. viewers on premiere date. But that jumped to over 1 million by its third day, 2 million a week out, and 4 million by Day 9 the Netflix original achieved a 10-day Average Audience Projection of just under 19 million people P2+. This eclipsed “Stranger Things 2” (17.5 million) and nearly matched “Stranger Things 3” (20.5 million). By comparison, “Stranger Things 2” reached 31.2 million people, “Tiger King” (S1) 34.3 million people, and “Stranger Things 3” 36.3 million people in their respective 10-day period following their individual premiere days.
On the social media side, Nielsen says, “among all programs ranked by total Twitter organic interactions,’Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness’ on Netflix was the No. 1 most social,” from March 20-March 29. Additionally, “Among all over-the-top (OTT) programs ranked by total Twitter organic interactions, ‘Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness’ on Netflix was the No. 1 most social.”
Netflix has yet to provide its own viewership data for “Tiger King,” which has held the No. 1 spot on the streaming service’s list of its Top 10 overall titles in the U.S. for the last 17 days — easily the longest streak since the list launched in February — and did not immediately respond to TheWrap’s request for comment on Nielsen’s figures.
See Nielsen’s breakdown of “Tiger King’s” first 10 days of viewership via the chart below.
