The biggest news from Apple TV+ this week was “Ted Lasso” Season 2 setting a new record for the streaming platform’s biggest premiere day and opening weekend ever.
Reelgood investigated just how much Ted Lasso has grown since its pilot episode was released a year ago and found:
• Ted Lasso Season 1 debuted with 1.9% shares of weekend streaming on Reelgood from Aug 14 to 16, 2020. Last week, season 2 got a much warmer reception, with 4.6% shares of weekend streaming. Since Season 1 debuted with three episodes and Season 2 opened with only one, Reelgood evened the playing field by analyzing this data on a user level. This means users are only counted once no matter how many episodes for which they clicked play.
• Looking at the data for Apple TV+ in general, Reelgood also saw that different TV shows on the service tend to reach a wider audience during the opening weekend of their second season vs. the first, a good indicator that Apple’s original content is doing its job keeping subscribers entertained and hopefully building a loyal fanbase along the way. For example — For All Mankind was only the 41st most-watched TV show across all SVOD streaming platforms during the opening weekend of its pilot season. But when season 2 rolled out, it became the 14th most-watched TV show during its first weekend.
• This growth in streaming and engagement for Apple TV+ Originals (spurred by terrific reviews and word-of-mouth marketing) seems to be affecting brand new releases as well such as Lisey’s Story (2.5%) and Schmigadoon! (2.1%) which opened to bigger shares of streaming compared to Ted Lasso during the premiere of its first season.
• Ted Lasso appears to be keeping the momentum going. This past weekend, from July 30 to Aug 1st, the second episode of season 2 garnered 5.3% shares of streaming and engagement.
Reelgood’s Maria Santos said in a statement, “While the journey to match the popularity of recent hit shows such as WandaVision and Loki may be challenging, it’s clear that Apple TV+ is at least on the right path with its original content.”
MacDailyNews Take: Nowadays, it’s very, very good to be Jason Sudeikis.