Netflix’s “Tiger King 2” opened with a roar, though viewership was nowhere near the Season 1 phenomenon.
The second season launched to 30 million hours streamed worldwide over the docuseries’ first five days, according to Netflix. The show charted at No. 2 on Netflix’s Top 10 for the Week of Nov. 15 – Nov. 21.
All that, with two days to spare.
The only show that beat “Tiger King 2” on Netflix’s new weekly Top 10 list for the most-watched English-language TV series globally was “League of Legends” adaptation “Arcane.” That freshman series, which last week was in second place behind the third season of “Narcos: Mexico” on Netflix’s inaugural most-watched chart, came in at No. 1 with 38.4 million hours viewed between Nov. 15 and Nov. 21.
But all of that is worldwide data, and Netflix also breaks down rankings by country (though it does not give hours viewed by country). So when just looking at the U.S., “Tiger King 2” actually comes in at No. 1 and “Arcane” falls to No. 10.
You can see the full worldwide Top 10 list for Netflix’s English-language TV series at the bottom of this post and find the other charts for the week here.
The original “Tiger King” became the first breakout streaming hit of the COVID lockdown era; a water-cooler show at a time when virtually nobody was in offices to gather around a water cooler. Over its first four weeks, “Tiger King” was sampled by 64 million Netflix households.
That’s how Netflix used to analyze its shows. At the time, “Tiger King” held onto the No. 1 spot on Netflix’s Top 10 list for 25 consecutive days.
The streamer counts a view when a subscriber “chose to watch and did watch for at least 2 minutes — long enough to indicate the choice was intentional.” Prior to that timely early 2020 shift in terminology, Netflix would only count a view after 70% of a show or movie was watched.
Not that we only have Netflix data to back up the behemoth’s big-cat reach. In its first 10 days alone, 34.3 million viewers gave “Tiger King” a go, according to Nielsen. In terms of its average-minute audience, the “Tiger King” rollout reached “Stranger Things” numbers.
It took a few days, however. “Tiger King” 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 (ages 2 and up).
According to Nielsen, the original “Tiger King” drew 5.3 billion minutes in Week 1 and posted 4.4 billion in Week 2.
