Disney+ Viewership for Movies Collapsed in August According to Nielsen Statistics

That’s not a click-bait title or hyperbole. Yes, Disney+ viewership dropped off a cliff in August according to Nielsen… and movies were hit the hardest.

This is one of the most puzzling stories we’ve covered when it comes to streaming ratings. When first going through the statistics released by Nielsen, we thought originally that Stranger Things and its remarkable hold on viewership was the headliner. We were wrong. Instead, once we dove a little deeper, we found that something peculiar was happening with Disney — and frankly, something we had not predicted at all. We’ve known for a while that Disney’s polling is showing a sharp increase in negative perception from key demographics; up until this latest report, however, we hadn’t seen a strong corollary event showing the sort of drop you’d expect to see. Sure, ratings for Disney+ haven’t looked right for a streaming service that is supposedly growing, but they’ve also held decently well.

All of that changed in mid-August. Let’s look at the ratings as reported by Nielsen just for movies:

Week of August 15 – 21, 2022

Pos, Platform, Title, Minutes Watched (in Millions)

Whereas Encanto sat in the winter at the top spot for many weeks, and did so with over two-billion watched minutes consistently, Lightyear’s third week on streaming dropped to an astounding degree. The movie was a flop at the box office, but it might be an even bigger flop on streaming. You might look and think that fourth place is not so bad, but the minutes watched is what is just horrible. Lightyear is only getting about one-fifth (or less) of Encanto’s viewership in comparison to when Mirabel’s movie was first on streaming.

That doesn’t fully tell the story though. To really grasp just how bad this is for Disney+, note that the only other movies to hit the Top Ten are Encanto and… Moana. There’s no Luca, no Soul, no Onward, no Turning Red. Worse, this was a down week across the board for movies — just two weeks prior, Lightyear’s numbers would have been bad enough to land it in eighth spot.

And if you really want to see how bad it was for Disney+, just look at the Top Ten for all streaming properties, not just movies:

Pos, Platform, Title, Minutes Watched (in Millions)

That’s not Doctor Strange landing in the only Disney+ top slot. It’s not Lightyear either.

It’s Bluey… the cartoon dog that Disney has no creative control over nor produces.

In fact, looking at all the ratings across the board, as released by Nielsen, HBO Max is actually quite competitive with Disney+ in terms of top viewership. How in the world can it be that Disney+ with all its subscribers is not demonstrably beating HBO Max in ratings? Is Disney+ engagement really that poor? And to add to the questions: what happened in mid-August that caused this drop-off in ratings for Mickey’s streaming platform?

All of this is very intriguing. It will be worth watching to see if this is a one-week fluke or if something larger is afoot.

For all the latest news that should be fun, keep reading That Park Place. As always, drop a comment down below and let us know your thoughts.