According to a Nielsen study exclusive to Variety, Netflix’s “Tiger King” garnered a U.S. TV audience of 34.3 million unique viewers within the first 10 days of its release (March 20-29), besting the season two premiere of “Stranger Things,” which garnered 31.2 million unique viewers in its first 10 days.
“On an average per-minute basis, ‘Tiger King’ pulled in an audience of 19.0 million among U.S. viewers from March 20-29, Nielsen reported. That also was higher than ‘Stranger Things 2’ (17.5 million) and nearly matched ‘Stranger Things 3’ (20.5 million),” Variety stated.
Although the show is currently the talk of the town, that wasn’t the case when it premiered on March 20. On the first day, the series only garnered an average-minute audience of 280,000 U.S. viewers and reached 741,000 unique viewers, Nielsen reports. This put it behind other heavy-hitters such as “Mindhunter” season two and “Altered Carbon” season one, which had an average-minute audience of 395,000 and 335,000 respectively.
However, hype surrounding the show climbed quickly and “daily average-minute audiences jumping to over 1 million by day three; two million by day seven; and four million by day nine. From March 20-29, it was the No. 1 most-tweeted TV show tracked by Nielsen over that time period, with 1.8 million total organic (nonpaid) interactions on Twitter about ‘Tiger King,’” Variety reported.
Last week, Rotten Tomatoes reported that the docu-series was the most popular TV show across the board. At the time, the show held a 97 percent critic’s rating and a 96 percent audience score on the site, putting it ahead of “Ozark,” USA Network’s “Queen of the South” and USA’s “The Sinner.”