‘Ted Lasso’ Was 2023’s Most-Watched Streaming Original In U.S. As ‘Suits’ Led Acquired Content Boom, Nielsen Says
29.01.2024 - 15:15
/ deadline.com
Ted Lasso went out on a high note at Apple TV+.
According to Nielsen, the series was the most-watched streaming original last year, despite the fact that Apple TV+ has the fewest subscribers among the streamers that saw their content ranked in Nielsen’s streaming Top 10.
Apple’s small footprint didn’t keep the Jason Sudeikis-fronted series from putting up 16.9B minutes across all 24 episodes in 2023. That’s 2.5B more than second place, which went to Netflix’s The Night Agent. In fact, Netflix claimed most of the ten most-streamed originals last year, only giving away two more spots — one to Prime Video for Jack Ryan and another to Disney+ for The Mandalorian.
Ted Lasso snuck to No. 1 with consistently strong, though not eye-catching weekly totals, only ever surpassing 1B minutes once, after the Season 3 finale debuted.
“It was people coming back, not necessarily watching a huge amount at a time,” Brian Fuhrer, Nielsen’s SVP of Product Strategy, told Deadline.
He added that the incremental increase in the duration of the episodes over the course of three seasons, capped with a 76-minute finale, also helped Ted Lasso sneakily increase its total.
Even the most-watched streaming original couldn’t touch No. 10 on the acquired titles list, which Supernatural secured with 22.8B viewing minutes, indicating that the streaming platforms are still very much buoyed by their library content.
Of course, the most-streamed title of the year was Suits. The USA Network legal drama put up 57.7B viewing minutes in 2023, spending 12 consecutive weeks at the top of Nielsen’s charts after it landed on Netflix in June.
Suits may have put up the highest total, but it wasn’t the only procedural that saw massive viewership last year. NCIS a