Netflix’s overnight streams of the 29th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday received over 1.5 million views across YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, a SAG Awards spokesperson tells TheWrap.
According to the streamer’s YouTube channel at the time of publication, approximately 882,000 people watched the ceremony with both video and audio, while approximately 250,000 viewers used the audio descriptive feed, an accessibility feature with narration that describes what is happening on screen for people with vision impairment. The livestream, which is available to rewatch, ran for 2 hours and 14 minutes with no ads.
Those YouTube viewing figures do not include separate breakout videos posted to the channel, including the ceremony’s cold open with Selena Gomez, Martin Short and Steven Martin, the “I Am an Actor” segment, and acceptance speeches from stars including Jessica Chastain, Ke Huy Quan, Michelle Yeoh, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Bateman, Sam Elliott, Sally Field, Brendan Fraser and Jamie Lee Curtis. Clips to that end generated an additional 19.4 million views, with the numbers continuing to increase as people watch highlights from the show Monday morning, according to the spokesperson.
YouTube and Nielsen calculate their viewing metrics differently, so it’s difficult to compare this year’s SAG Awards ceremony ratings to previous years. Last year, the SAG Awards drew an average 1.8 million total viewers for the TBS and TNT simulcast. In 2021, the ceremony averaged 957,000 total viewers – a record low.
In January, Netflix announced a multi-year partnership with the SAG Awards to livestream the ceremony on its platform starting in 2024. The announcement came after the SAG Awards ended its broadcast partnership with TBS and TNT.
In addition to this year’s SAG Awards, Netflix will livestream the upcoming comedy special “Chris Rock: Selective Outrage” on March 4.
