More than a billion minutes of The Mandalorian were streamed during November

It was always expected when Disney acquired the Star Wars franchise that it would become a big hit for the house of mouse. The surprise here has been the franchise finding critical and commercial acclaim not at the box office (although the films did make a boatload of cash) but at home thanks to a certain TV show that features a masked hero and his baby Yoda. The Mandalorian has revived the franchise once again after the last few movies received a hostile reception.

Just how popular is The Mandalorian? Most streaming services don’t reveal decent numbers on this, but the Nielsen’s streaming rankings (according to Deadline) are trying to change that. The service begun measuring what different people are watching and has reported that over the past month since season 2 released on October 30, that the show has been streaming around the US for over a billion minutes.

Which is more than five times the amount than anything else on Disney+ currently, which is where the company is getting most of its revenue in the current Covid-19 climate. This means that The Mandalorian is Disney’s biggest Star Wars property presently, and most popular offering in a year without any Marvel movies.

Despite those impressive numbers, the show was only able to reach number three on the Nielsen’ ratings as the most-streamed shows in the US are unsurprisingly Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit with over 1.85 billion minutes logged so far and comedy series, The Office, which is still proving popular and was streamed for 1.05 billion minutes.

To put the Mandalorian popularity into perspective, The Office has several seasons which people can watch and The Queen’s Gambit has all of its episodes available right now, which can be streamed in its entirety. The Mandalorian has only released 4 episodes in its second season and is likely going to pull in far bigger numbers per episode, even if some of those stats will include people catching up with the first season too.  

These numbers do paint a powerful image though of just how people are drawn to certain shows and just how popular a hit show like The Mandalorian can be for a streaming service.

If Disney can keep tapping into fan love for the Star Wars franchise along with upcoming Marvel series, they could be set to keep growing their subscriber numbers quite considerably.

Well, at least in the US as it may still be a while before we see them here.

Last Updated: December 1, 2020