Recently, Nielsen—which uses a combination of magic and surveys to gauge how many people watch a TV show—announced that it would begin studying Netflix viewership numbers so it could determine how many people were streaming specific content on it service. Netflix didn’t like this, because it cares very deeply about keeping its viewership numbers secret for whatever reason, and it even released a statement saying that Nielsen’s data is “not accurate, not even close.”
Now, we can all prepare for Netflix to release another terse and frustrated statement, as Nielsen has shared some of its own ratings data on Stranger Things 2. This comes from Deadline, which reports that Nielsen has called the return of Stranger Things a “significant viewing event.” Supposedly, the premiere episode averaged 15.8 million views in the U.S. over the first three days, with the other episodes all averaging 4 million viewers. Netflix will probably never confirm this, but Nielsen also believes that 361,000 people watched all nine episodes—even the bad one—on the first day. Deadline also makes it sound like Nielsen’s numbers are specifically for people who watched on a TV, not on a phone, so the ratings are probably even higher.