Squid Game Vaults to Top of Nielsen's Latest Streaming Ranking

Squid Game now sits firmly atop the latest Nielsen streaming rankings, after failing to crack the Top 10 with its first (but only partial) week of release.

For the Week of Sept. 20, the Netflix megahit amassed 1.9 billion minutes viewed across its nine episodes, easily besting all other original streaming series.

The previous week’s champ, Netflix’s Lucifer, slipped to No. 2 with 860 million minutes viewers across 93 total episodes. It was followed by Netflix’s Sex Education (865 million/24 episodes) and Midnight Mass (566 million/7 episodes) and Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso (509 million/20 episodes).

Rounding out the Top 10 for the week of Sept. 20 were Netflix’s The Circle, Clickbait and The Great British Baking Show, the first six episodes of Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building, and Netflix’s Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan.

Squid Game‘s rapid ascendance on the Nielsen chart comes as no surprise. The Korean series about 456 people who are lured into playing (incredibly) deadly versions of children’s games currently stands as Netflix’s most sampled debut ever, having reached 142 million accounts in its first 28 days. (Netflix counts two minutes of any program as a “view,” though their methodology is changing.) In doing so, Squid Game surpassed the period romance Bridgerton, which in its first four weeks was sampled by 82 million accounts.

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