Netflix Users Streamed 'Tiger King' for Over 5 Billion Minutes in a Week

Tiger King became an instant hit when it debuted on Netflix last month, dominating headlines as fans dig further into the story of Joe Exotic. The docuseries is so succesful that it's accumulated more streaming minutes within its first full week of release than any other show across streaming services.

As the Hollywood Reporter noted, Nielsen revealed SVOD content ratings for the final week of March, and Tiger King was by far the leader. Users watched over 5.3 billion minutes of the show from March 23-29—a.k.a. 83.3 million hours—over a mere seven episodes. The closest behind Tiger King is Netflix's Ozark, which recently returned with its third season. The total streaming minutes for Ozark reached 3.5 billion minutes in total. In third the CW's All American was streamed a total of 1.8 billion minutes, while The Office was streamed around 1.5 billion minutes.

The streaming giant has argued that the Nielsen SVOD ratings don't give a full indication of the viewership, though, as the numbers only count viewers in the United States.

Nielsen also revealed that the Joel McHale-hosted aftershow The Tiger King and I had a a strong first-day audience. On the day of its release, the follow-up earned 4.6 million viewers, which is more than the series as a whole for the period of March 20-29. During its first 10 days, Tiger King averaged 19 million viewers, cementing its place as one of Netflix's biggest original titles to date.

The coronavirus pandemic has clearly resulted in more people turning to streaming in general, as Nielsen said viewers in the U.S. watched 169.9 billion minutes of content for the week of April 7. That's the most since the pandemic was declared in March.