Netflix is disputing reports that it’s seeing a notable drop in Season 2 viewership.
“Our Season 2 falloff is actually slightly improved this year relative to last year,” Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said on Thursday during the company’s second quarter earnings report. “Our second seasons are performing well within our bands of expectation.”
Sarandos noted that a drop in viewership from Seasons 1 and 2 is very common in the television industry. But because of the way Netflix operates, the streamer often sees a bigger drop than its competitors.
“Our global reach, our discovery mechanism, releasing all at once — this enables us to find a very large audience early. So our shows tend to start really big, while at most other places, their shows start pretty small and occasionally grow from there,” Sarandos said. Looking across Netflix’s entire portfolio, including all regions and content categories, the streamer’s Season 2 drop off has “slightly” improved.
The streamer has no plans to change its release strategy.
Fretting over Netflix’s Season 2 viewership started around two weeks ago following a report from Bloomberg. Several websites (including TheWrap) published stories analyzing Netflix’s second season viewership.
Ever since Netflix started reporting its total engagement, the streamer has seen a steady increase in total hours watched. That remained true in the first half of this year, which saw a cumulative 97 billion hours watched worldwide. That’s a 2% increase compared to the first half of 2025 and a 3% increase compared to 2024. Despite much reporting about the slump around Netflix’s second-season shows this year, TV accounted for most of that lift. Netflix’s TV viewership was up 4.5% while its movie viewership was down 3.1%. However, limited series accounted for a large amount of Netflix’s TV viewership during the first half of the year. Of the 10 most-watched series during the first half of the year, four of them were limited series.
It should be noted that Netflix is the only streamer that shares this much of its viewership data. While other streamers do release top 10 most watched lists, those lists are often released without numbers or metrics, meaning people curious about viewership data have to rely on third-party reporting companies like Nielsen.
