Netflix says 142 million households watched Korean series ‘Squid Game’

According to Bloomberg, Netflix’s pre-recorded call to shareholders announcing its third-quarter results gives us another glimpse at how successful Squid Game was. Around 142 million households worldwide watched the Korean-language show about debt—ridden individuals playing a deadly game for a cash prize worth tens of millions of dollars. That makes it the most-viewed new show in Netflix history, the publication said. 

Squid Game captured the “cultural zeitgeist” and claimed the number 1 spot in the streaming giant’s rankings in 94 countries, including the US, Netflix has revealed. Since there’s a huge demand for all things Squid Game, Netflix has also announced that consumer products based on the show are now on their way to retail. 

A few days ago, Bloomberg obtained documents detailing the company’s scores for “impact value” and “efficiency.” Netflix has been pretty secretive on the metrics that make a title successful or not, and the documents showed how it measures series’ and movies’ success. Squid Game was a standout, generating $891.1 million in impact value, which is around 41.7 times — that’s its efficiency score — its budget of $21.4 million.

Thanks in part to Squid Game’s massive viewership, Netflix said it posted its best subscriber growth of the year. “As the quarter continued, we saw an acceleration in our growth,” Chief Financial Officer Spencer Neumann said on the call. It welcomed 4.38 million subscribers in the third quarter, mostly from Asia and Europe, and it expects to get 8.5 million more customers in the final quarter of 2021.