‘The Mandalorian’ vs. ‘The Queen’s Gambit’: What Won November 2020?

In the last edition of this column, I noted that September 2020 felt relatively light in the streaming world for big releases. Well, November 2020 really brought the heat, with a bounty hunter, a chess player, and a Princess vying for America’s streaming attention.

So who won the month? Let’s find out.

The plan is to go streamer-by-streamer, reviewing all the various press releases, data leaks and estimates to guesstimate what was the most popular film or TV show by platform. If your favorite didn’t make the list, it likely didn’t budge the popularity needle. This is a US-only look, since we have the best data for America.

(Also, we’ll cheat a little bit and go back into October, since October 23rd had several big releases.)

The Contenders

Disney+ & Hulu

We’ll start with the show most likely to take the crown this month: The Mandalorian. I’ll admit I’m extremely biased towards Mando since I’m as big a Star Wars fan as I am an entertainment strategy fan. (That’s why I wrote a small novel on Disney buying Lucasfilm.) Yet, the data backs up that Disney+ is—until a new Marvel TV series show up in January—the “Mandalorian Channel” with some Marvel films.

How popular was it? Well, it depends. Disney+ hasn’t told us anything about viewership so we have to use third-party estimates. According to Nielsen, American customers watched over 17.2 million hours of The Mandalorian on its opening weekend, which beats the previous non-Netflix title holder of The Boys, which premiered to 14.9 million hours. However, according to Reelgood The Boys Season 2 took the prize.

Either way, The Mandalorian is clearly one of the most popular TV series on right now (Brandon Katz has a good summary of The Mandalorian’s popularity over at The Observer.)

On the adult side of Disney, Hulu had its own success with the thriller film Run. In typical Hulu fashion, though, we didn’t get any concrete details, but a vaguely worded press release letting us know that Run was very popular, but just how popular they wouldn’t say. Unfortunately, “Run” is such a generic term that Google Trends won’t work to compare it to other films.

(Honorable mentions for Disney in November include Animaniacs on Hulu, which was the show I heard the most from people my age, and it had a pretty strong launch according to Google Trends. Also, Folklore featured Taylor Swift, which meant it was buzzy if nothing else.)

Netflix

Netflix is the king of streaming—it has nearly twice as many subscribers as the next two streamers combined—so it will have several contenders for the popularity prize this month. After a relatively light October, Netflix has been on a roll in November, starting with a limited series on chess, of all things. The Queen’s Gambit set global records for the number of weeks it spent in the top spot of Netflix’s daily top ten list:

Netflix also confirmed that The Queen’s Gambit was watched by 62 million subscribers, though we don’t know the breakdown of US versus the rest of the world. To put this in context, as big as The Queen’s Gambit was, it still hasn’t passed some of Netflix’s truly monster series, like The Witcher or Stranger Things. When accounting for the growth of Netflix, The Queen’s Gambit comes in tenth place in Netflix’s all-time list:

And that may not be Netflix’s biggest show this November. Using Google Trends data, the most recent season of The Crown may have outpaced The Queen’s Gambit in interest. Here is a selection of October and November Netflix show and their Google Trends performance (in context to The Mandalorian):

Netflix is also a film studio, and it has started its fall slate as well. Here’s a look at the biggest three films from October and November (as far as I can tell) compared to The Mandalorian and Mulan:

If we have to pick a winner, let’s go with Christmas Chronicles, The Crown and The Queen’s Gambit for Netflix.

Amazon Prime

After the big success of The Boys in September, Amazon Prime Video made all the headlines by picking up Borat’s Subsequent Moviefilm in October. Borat’s second film became a national news story, which likely helped it launch to 9.5 million hours watched over its first weekend, according to Nielsen. ScreenEngine, another analytics firm, said that Borat was the second most watched movie in its first seven days after Hamilton:

HBO/HBO Max

Meanwhile, HBO/HBO Max continues to do its HBO thing. (I combine the two since many folks split their time between the channel and the app.) HBO might have its biggest series of the year in The Undoing, which is described by some as Big Little Lies set in New York City. HBO has said that The Undoing has already had an episode pass 1.7 million viewers, which beats Perry Mason’s peak from the summer and the season finale of Lovecraft Country.

Meanwhile, Warner Media continues to send high profile content exclusively to HBO Max. Specifically, The Witches debuted on HBO Max directly and they hosted a Fresh Prince reunion. To see how those did in comparison, here’s the Google Trends:

As I wrote in September, with weekly releases, shows can build steam on some streamers, like HBO. That’s what we’re seeing with The Undoing, as folks hear about it and it builds steam as the season goes on. Meanwhile, despite the buzz of The Queen’s Gambit, HBO Max launched a few films and series that generated as much or more interest.

The Also-Rans

After the first and second tiers of the streaming wars, the rest of the field is trying to break into the conversation. Likely the biggest launch on Apple TV+ was On the Rocks, a new film from Sophia Coppola, but it didn’t really resonate. Peacock relaunched Saved by the Bell, but I haven’t seen a buzzy uptick there either. CBS All-Access (soon to be Paramount+) was also relatively quiet, as its parent company focuses on its broadcast channel’s new fall lineup.

So Who Won November 2020?

As always, it depends how you count. My go to metric, Google Trends, is a bit stymied this month. Here’s The Mandalorian versus Borat Subsequent Movie Film:

Yet, we know that via Nielsen that the sophomore seasons of Mando (17.2 million hours) nearly doubled Borat’s viewership (9.5 million). (I trust Nielsen more than Google Trends.) This is one of the problems of relying solely on Google Trends, since it can be noisy. Borat’s Subsequent Moviefilm was highly searched because a certain former New York City mayor. Dropping Borat, here’s the rest of the contenders:

For November, this crown goes to the child formerly known as Baby Yoda. Though likely The Crown will pass The Mandalorian in total minutes viewed, simply because it has more minutes to view. 

As big as November was, next month should be even more exciting with the titanic battle between HBO Max’s Wonder Woman 1984, Disney’s Soul, Netflix’s Bridgerton and Amazon’s The Expanse.

The Entertainment Strategy Guy writes under this pseudonym at his eponymous website. A former exec at a streaming company, he prefers writing to sending emails/attending meetings, so he launched his own website. Sign up for his newsletter at Substack for regular thoughts and analysis on the business, strategy and economics of the media and entertainment industry.