Alex Honnold successfully scaled one of the world’s tallest skyscrapers on Saturday without a rope — so what kind of audience did the risky live event attract?
The free-solo climber’s conquering of Taipei 101 aired live on the streamer at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET and, through the end of Netflix‘s measurement interval on Sunday, tallied 6.2M streaming views (defined as hours viewed divided by runtime). That put it at No. 3 among English TV viewing for the week of January 19 to 25.
That seems to be a decent audience for the live event in which Honnold accomplished a lifelong dream and set a record for the tallest urban free solo climb in the world. There are not any direct comparisons to be made here, since the nature of the event was quite unique, but there are some other live sporting events that can be used as a reference.
For instance, last summer’s Katie Taylor-Amanda Serrano rematch collected 2.8M streaming views from Friday (when it aired) through Sunday. The Taipei 101 climb does seem to be on the lower end in terms of what is possible for high-profile live events on Netflix. In September, Terence Crawford defeated Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez in September to the tune of more than 17M streaming views from its Saturday night live telecast through Sunday night. Football games have typically generated much larger audiences as well.
As for what else captivated TV viewers last week on Netflix, His & Hers is still going strong at No. 1 on the English series list with 17.2M views. While that is down from just over 29M views the week prior, it’s nearly on par with the series’ first week of viewership, suggesting that the audience is still growing, even if the growth is slowing. It’s looking more and more like His & Hers might have a shot at the most popular list. It is now totaling 66.6M views after three weeks, and it has just over 70 days to pass The Night Agent Season 1 at No. 10 with 98.2M views.
Second place went to Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials with 8.7M views, and Finding Her Edge grabbed 5.5M views and fourth place.
On the film side of things, The Rip added another 40.4M views to its total, effectively on par with its debut week. That’s over a longer period of time, of course, but still a promising level of sustained viewership for the Matt Damon and Ben Affleck suspense thriller.
Second place went to a new documentary called Kidnapped: Elizabeth Smart with 15.9M views.
No Time to Die stole the No. 3 spot from People We Meet on Vacation, landing on Netflix last week and quickly raking in 9.6M views. The latter got fourth place and 9.3M views.
