Analyst Declares “The Walt Disney Company Media Spin Machine Is In Full Force” After Company Claimed ‘Ahsoka’ Brought In 14 Million Views Globally For First Episode

John F. Trent |

Aug 30, 2023

Financial and box office analyst Valliant Renegade declared The Walt Disney Company was putting out some major spin when they announced that their latest Star Wars Disney+ series brought in 14 million views globally.

The official StarWars.com website announced in a blog post, “Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company are thrilled and humbled to announce that Part One of Ahsoka, “Master and Apprentice,” was the most-watched title on Disney+ this past week. The debut episode garnered 14 million views, making the series number one globally on the streaming platform.”

Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy added, “Ahsoka has become a fan favorite with people of all ages and it’s wonderful to see her continue to resonate with viewers in her very own headlining series.”

“I want to recognize the fantastic work done by our creative team, led by Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau, the incredible cast led by Rosario Dawson, and our talented crew — and on behalf of the team and all of Lucasfilm, we give our thanks to all the fans who have been with Ahsoka on every step of her journey and to all those who are just learning about her now in Ahsoka on Disney+,” she added.

(L-R): Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), Huyang (David Tennant), Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson) in Lucasfilm’s STAR WARS: AHSOKA, exclusively on Disney+. ©2023 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.

This post came after it was reported by third party data tracking firm Samba TV that Ahsoka’s viewership in the United States was far worse than previous Star Wars Disney+ series with the exception of Andor.

Samba TV reported Ahsoka was only watched by 1.2 million U.S. households over its first six days.

Ahsoka premiere viewership via Samba TV on X

This was far less than previous premieres such as The Mandalorian Season 3, which they noted drew in 1.6 million U.S. households.

The Mandalorian Season 2 premiere viewership via Samba TV on X

It was also below Obi-Wan Kenobi, which they reported as bringing in 2.14 million U.S. households in its first four days streaming on Disney+.

It also fell below The Mandalorian Season 2 and The Book of Boba of Fett. The outlet reported The Mandalorian was watched by 2.08 million U.S. households and The Book of Boba Fett was watched by 1.5 million in their first four days.

Obi-Wan Kenobi premiere viewership via Samba TV Instagram

Valliant Renegade reacted to Lucasfilm and The Walt Disney Company’s announcement of the 14 million views by first questioning Samba TV changing their metric from from three or four days with shows like Obi-Wan Kenobi to six days with Ahsoka.

Well, Samba TV had an answer, “This actually has more to do with when the episodes are released as we will typically run data through the weekend since a lot of viewership happens then.”

The company then shared six day numbers for both Andor and The Mandalorian Season 3 with Andor clocking in at 1.2 million and The Mandalorian coming in at 1.7 million.

Samba TV on X

In a follow-up they revealed Obi-Wan Kenobi clocked in at 2.4 million, double that of what the firm was reporting for Ahsoka.

Samba TV on X

Reacting to this information, Valliant Renegade stated, “Ahsoka has now officially performed at half, half of Obi-Wan Kenobi and from as best we can tell about half of the six day total that would be the Season 2 premiere of The Mandalorian from a couple of years ago.”

He then shared, “What’s interesting about that is that over time The Walt Disney Company has added nearly 50% more subscribers to the Disney+ service going from around 30 million when Mando Season 2 premiered to today where there are about 45 million subscribers.”

Later he states, “So as Disney+ subscribers have been going steadily up over the last several years the overall trend in viewership for Disney+’s ‘core’ content as Bob Iger calls it, that being both Star Wars and Marvel, for that matter, have been steadily on decline.”

From there, Valliant Renegade took a look at the press release from Star Wars announcing their 14 million global views for the first episode.

He reacted, “That does not seem terribly impressive considering if we were to go back and look up what the numbers that were reported from places like Warner Bros. and even Amazon were for Game of Thrones’ House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power. Those numbers were sharply better than Ahsoka was. Matter of fact, Warner Bros. was touting 10 million views in the United States alone for the premiere of the House of the Dragon just on its opening night and over the first week it rose to 20 million views. And those numbers were backed up by Nielsen, which suggests those were, in fact, only in North America.”

In a press release, WarnerMedia announced House of the Dragon “drew 9.986 million viewers across linear and HBO Max platforms in the U.S. Sunday night, the largest audience for any new original series in the history of HBO.

By the series finale, Warner Bros. Discovery stated, “All episodes of the series are now averaging 29 million viewers in the U.S., more than tripling their average debut night audience with strong catch-up viewing.”

Prime Video announced in a press release that The Rings Of Power “attracted more than 25 million global viewers on its first day, breaking all previous records, marking the biggest premiere in the history of Prime Video.”

Valliant Renegade then took a look at how The Walt Disney Company claims they arrived at the 14 million view number.

He began, “According to Disney, a view in this count is defined as total stream time divided by run time available. Nielsen measures watch time in terms of minutes watched and then we can take an episode’s run time say 30 minutes or 45 minutes divide that into the total watch time and come up with a relatively good idea of how many total viewers watched the show given that every person watched the show completely one time.”

“What’s odd here is why does Disney have to do it this way. They don’t. This is direct-to-consumer programming. Meaning that you have to log into a proprietary Disney service to watch this show. Every time you log in and click a show to watch a little counter goes off at Disney somewhere. They know who’s watching what. They know exactly how many views that a given program has at any given time,” he explained.

Valliant Renegade then questioned, “So why then do they have to use this metric as opposed to just telling us this is how many views we got?”

He added, “The other side of this too, is that we don’t know how many of those views were duplicative. Meaning, did we actually have 14 million individual households watch this content or did we have seven million households around the world that watched the episode twice?”

What do you make of Lucasfilm claiming Ahsoka received 14 million views globally for just its first episode? What do you make of this in comparison to Samba TV’s reporting that the series only garnered 1.2 million views?

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