*Update December 10: Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos revealed Tuesday at the UBS Global TMT Conference in New York that, so far, 26,4 million of Netflix's 158 million subscribers have watched 70% or more of the 209 minutes of The Irishman.
Given the unusual nature of its theatrical release , the box office numbers for The Irishman ( 7,9 on FilmAffinity) will be of relative importance compared to its Netflix audience. Considering that Martin Scorsese's latest escapade cost the streaming platform around $160 million , this is where the real test will be: was Netflix, a company that started as a DVD rental store, right to make such a significant financial investment? Initial Nielsen figures point to resounding success.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EThb2OGf8Pw
If there's one thing that characterizes Netflix (besides being the mastermind behind the business model that nearly wiped out movie piracy), it's its lack of transparency. In fact, this fascinating report on the audience figures for the first five days of The Irishman in the United States comes from none other than Nielsen, the leading authority on audience measurement and analysis in that country.
The first headline is clear: some 17 million households streamed The Irishman at some point during its first five days on Netflix. That's significantly more than El Camino (11 million views) achieved in the same period, but the number falls far short of last year's mega-hit, Bird Box (26 million views).
As we can see in the following graph from the study , The Irishman had an average minute audience (more on this shortly) of thirteen million US households in its first five days of availability on the platform, having a total reach of 17 million accounts that, at some point, tuned in to the film.
The first row for each day indicates the average audience per minute that chose to watch The Irishman that day:
Audience data on Netflix for 'The Irishman' in its first five days in the US
But how many people have seen complete The Irish on Netflix?
Before answering, a pertinent clarification:
What exactly is this average audience per minute that Nielsen measures? According to Variety, this metric doesn't necessarily indicate the total number of viewers for The Irishman. Traditionally used for television broadcasts , it's a metric that, in this particular context, measures viewing time, establishing an average number of viewers calculated based on the film's total running time.
The Irishman has averaged between 2,2 and 3,2 million viewers per day on Netflix during its first five days in the United States, with Friday, November 29th being the peak day at 3.136.00 viewers. However, given its three-and-a-half-hour runtime, the truly interesting question is how many of these viewers mustered the stoicism to watch The Irishman in its entirety, without leaving their couches.
Variety reports that 751.000 Americans watched The Irishman in its entirety on its opening day (November 27). It's worth noting that the film had a very limited theatrical release in the United States earlier in the month, on November 1. The peak day for viewers watching the entire film was Friday, November 29, with 930.000 Netflix accounts streaming The Irishman from beginning to end.
Netflix, which typically questions all Nielsen reports, says it plans to publish its viewership figures in a more organized and transparent way in the future. You can read the full viewership report for The Irishman on Netflix by clicking this link.