Netflix has cornered the market in the streaming wars, and while Disney Plus has grand designs on becoming the world’s premiere platform by the end of 2025, there’s still plenty of work to be done to topple the current leader.
While almost every streaming service with the exception of Netflix tends not to release official viewing figures, the Nielsen ratings can often be a helpful method of determining what constitutes a success. Sure, the model is somewhat outdated and recently suffered a massive scandal after admitting data had been under-counted for well over a year, but we digress.
Almost every set of weekly data has a Netflix original at the head of the TV ratings pack, but from November 15 to 21, Amazon’s The Wheel of Time was miles out in front. Not only is it a rarity for another platform to claim a victory, but it’s made more impressive when you consider that only the first three episodes were available to stream at the time those figures were collated.
The Wheel of Time racked up 1.1 billion minutes during that timeframe, almost double the 685 million brought in by Season 2 of Tiger King. A second run of episodes for the lavish fantasy are already underway, so the massive investment looks to have been justified.