The Acolyte Nielsen ratings are in, and as expected, they’re not good, with the numbers being the second worst for Disney Star Wars.
We already knew the viewership was lower than Ahsoka, but it’s also been learned the viewership is much lower than The Mandalorian by what looks to be nearly 75%, it’s lower than Obi-Wan Kenobi, and it’s even lower than The Book of Boba Fett.
The Acolyte only beats Andor in terms of viewership, and really not by much.
The Acolyte also cost nearly double that of Ahsoka—$187M vs $100M—while the Nielsen ratings reveal that Ahsoka‘s viewership is nearly double that of The Acolyte.
Disney and Bob Iger definitely can’t be happy with these numbers.
What are The Acolyte Nielsen ratings?
Nielsen (the industry standard) released its streaming ratings for the week of June 3 – June 9. The Acolyte premiered with its first two episodes on June 4.
According to Nielsen, the first two episodes of The Acolyte were watched for 488 minutes (millions), or if we take the average of the two episodes, that’s 244.
Update: Episode 3 numbers can be found here.
What about the other Star Wars shows?
Ahsoka? Via Nielsen, the two-episode premiere back on August 22, 2023 was watched for 829 minutes (millions), so that averages to 414.5 per episode.
The Mandalorian Season 3 premiered with one episode on March 1, 2023 for 823.
Andor premiered with three episodes on September 21, 2022 and was watched for 624, an average of 208 per episode.
Obi-Wan Kenobi premiered with two episodes on May 27, 2022 for 1,026, an average of 513 an episode.
The Book of Boba Fett premiered with one episode on December 29, 2021 for 389.
The Mandalorian Season 2 premiered with one episode on October 30, 2020 for 1031.
We don’t have the Nielsen numbers for Mando Season 1 back in 2019.
Nielsen viewership premiere average per episode in minutes (millions):
- The Mandalorian S2 – 1032
- The Mandalorian S3 – 823
- Obi-Wan Kenobi: 513
- Ahsoka 2 – 414.5
- Book of Boba Fett – 389
- The Acolyte – 244
- Andor – 208
What about the viewings and the runtimes?
If we want to figure out the average viewings for each premiere because the runtimes for the episodes are different, we divide the Nielsen viewership numbers by the runtime.
We see not much changes except for Mando S3 and Boba Fett (note: the Mando S3 bump is likely because of Luke Skywalker appearing in Boba) but regardless, The Acolyte still ranks second to the bottom:
- The Mandalorian S3 premiere: 37m total runtime (one episode) – 22.24 million viewings
- The Mandalorian S2: 55m (one episode) – 18.76m
- Obi-Wan Kenobi: 98m (two episodes) – 10.47m
- Book of Boba Fett: 40m (one episode) – 9.73m
- Ahsoka 2: 101m (two episodes) – 8.2m
- The Acolyte: 82m (two episodes) – 5.95m
- Andor: 123m (three episode) – 5.07m
Obviously, what the data reveals is that there is a significant difference in popularity when comparing the top show, The Mandalorian, to what’s at the bottom, The Acolyte.
The data reveals that a majority of fans who watched The Mandalorian didn’t tune in for The Acolyte (or much of the other Star Wars shows)—nearly 75% weren’t interested, as indicated by the significant 73.25% drop in viewership.
