(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.)
Regarding this article’s headline, let me just reassure you that, no, sports docu-series aren’t “dead”. The genre’s popularity is down, albeit from a pretty low place to start, but that doesn’t mean the entire genre is “dead” or “dying”.
So why offer up that headline? Because I think it’s funny. Mainly, The Atlantic is overusing this style of headline way too much, as The New Republic detailed last month:
It may be the end of drinking, but I’m on my fifth scotch as I write this, so take that, Atlantic! It’s not just them:
Obviously, I think these headlines are overhyping things—that death of theaters narrative did not age well—so just know, today’s headline is ironic. (At least it’s not as bad as headlines about “everyone”.)
That was a lot of preamble, but hoo boy, we’ve got a ton of stuff to get to. In fact, this is the first part of a double issue, but not because I’m covering two weeks of data. No! This week was bursting with so many interesting topics—Obsession! World Cup! Sports Docu-Series flopping! Love Island USA!—that I’m splitting it into two parts with four “mini-dives”, when normally I only write two.
Today, I’m looking at the TV side of things, diving deep into Love Island USA’s monster run and Quarterback fumbling the ball. Plus, I’ll look at Prime Video’s surprising hit show, Netflix and Will Ferrell’s new comedy, The Hawk, Dutton Ranch falling off the charts, House of the Dragon’s sustained run, Apple TV having a few shows on various charts, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more.
Then next issue, I’ll tackle sports and film, including Obsession, MLB’s strike-out on streaming, the World Cup, the Heartstopper finale, and a bunch more.
Let’s dive right in!
(Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of July 13th to July 19th, 2026.
You can find a link to my terminology here.)
Television – Love Island USA’s Eighth Season is the Second Biggest Show of the Year
We had two big stories this week, and since I couldn’t decide what was more interesting/important/fun, I decided to give each their own “mini-dive”. Let’s start with the positive:
Love Island USA is huge.
Sometimes, it can be hard to figure out what’s left to say about a show that has dominated for weeks, but it makes making the charts easier. Love Island USA had its finale on 12-July. As happens, it had one more week of carry-over viewership, then promptly fell off the viewership charts—Nielsen, Samba TV and Luminate—which is to be expected. But now we can put its run in context.
Starting with Nielsen, it grabbed 9.9 million hours for the week of 13-July, which means it made the top ten for seven weeks with 188.8 million hours. That’s one week shorter than last year on the charts, but more total hours. That’s good for second overall in 2026 so far, only behind—you guessed it—The Pitt. It even bested Stranger Things S5b for this calendar year.
Here’s how it stacks up to itself, and the other three top reality shows of the Streaming Ratings era:
The other viewership charts were just as strong. On Samba TV, Love Island USA ended up making the charts five times over six weeks. On Luminate, it regularly topped 40 million hours, which is very strong. Luminate made a chart so I don’t have to recreate its data:
Luminate also pointed out that Love Island USA likely got a boost from the World Cup Spanish-language games streamed on Peacock. That’s a smart strategy from Peacock, taking advantage of a live sports boost to drive viewership to other programming. Now, along with The Traitors, Peacock has two shows that appeal to their Bravo audience for streaming, and they have them six months apart (January for The Traitors and June for Love Island USA) so they can drive more year round viewership and limit churn.
Let me address one potential criticism of this show. Love Island USA puts out episodes daily, and that drives daily viewership. Yes, that means Love Island USA has a lot of episodes. Yes, that drives lots of viewership from a smaller audience of customers. True. But it still drives that viewership and, crucially, the show grew its audience year-over-year, the ultimate sign of success. Peacock needs hits and this is one.
Listen, Peacock still has a ton of ground to catch up in the streaming wars, but this is a good performance.
Television – Quarterback Tosses a Pick Six in Its Third Season
One reason I came up with the term “Dogs Not Barking” to describe shows that don’t make any of the viewership charts I track is that it becomes downright impossible to visualize them for you, the reader. The charts are blank!
Take, for example, a comparison of the latest season of Netflix and Omaha Production’s Quarterback compared to the second season of Netflix’s NBA sports docu-series, Starting 5, according to Nielsen’s data:
Not very interesting, huh? You can’t see anything. That said, we can notice one thing: Quarterback has been losing yards, er, viewership every season. Here’s that look, along with the spinoff show, Receiver:
Yeah, we have a blank for the third season of Quarterback, because it didn’t make the cut for Nielsen. It also didn’t crack Netflix’s starting lineup, er, global charts. That means that Quarterback had less than 1.7 million views the week it came out globally according to Netflix’s data. That’s another data point against the NFL’s global expansion narrative. (Same goes for the NBA and Starting 5, frankly.)
But it did make the Luminate charts! Unfortunately, the numbers were bad. For context, Quarterback ended up behind Ultimatum: Marry or Move On this week:
I have a few hypotheses for Quarterback’s declining viewership. First, season one got a lot of news coverage, but then the free media coverage went away for future seasons. This seems to happen more often with sports docu-series.
Next, Netflix’s viewership, overall, is down over the last year or so, but especially in Q2, as I’ve covered extensively this year.
But perhaps the best explanation is the simplest: stars matter. And Quarterback stopped featuring star quarterbacks. Just compare the first season’s star—Patrick Mahomes, arguably the best QB in the league—and the second season’s—Joe Burrow, also a top five quarterback at the time—to this season’s line-up: Jayden Daniels, Baker Mayfield, Cam Ward and Joe Flacco. There’s not a top five quarterback in there, let alone a top ten quarterback.
The issue might be money. Athletes and sports leagues signed up to make these docu-series for minimal compensation, in exchange for exposure. But this genre tends not to deliver said exposure. Why would a famous QB sign up to star in Quarterback, at a huge discount, risking embarrassment and sacrificing a lot of time, if the show can’t even crack the top ten in America? If players and leagues are raising their asking prices, it might be why they’re not showing up in the series.
Over the last couple of years, a new explanation has also surfaced: sports docu-series fatigue. The problem with this explanation is that the genre has never really been all that popular:
Sure, there are too many sports docu-series, but the audience can’t be fatigued from something they never really watched in the first place. Even the most famous sports docu-series, Formula 1: Drive to Survive, misses the charts most years.
Clearly, as you can see from that chart, Quarterback was Netflix’s most successful sports docu-series, and it’s now unable to score a ratings touchdown.
So, are sports docu-series “dead”, as I wrote in the title? Not really. Sports docu-series are easy-to-produce, low cost productions. Heck, just this month, Hard Knocks debuted for its 28th season. Back in the day, few people ever touted this show for “changing the way we consume football” or anything like that. No, that only happened a few years ago after Drive to Survive made the charts or ESPN’s The Last Dance skyrocketed during the pandemic. Then every sports league rushed to copy them, and everyone was talking about how this sport changed everything:
What’s dead (or should be dead) is the relentless hype for this genre. I doubt anyone will make that case anymore.
One final thought: I wrote about how Omaha Productions was probably overvalued last year. With the decline of their biggest show, I stand by these concerns. They produce a lot of live events, like the NFL Pro Bowl Games and the ESPY Awards, but their biggest shows aren’t doing well: Starting 5 got cancelled, Quarterback just missed the Nielsen charts and Netflix global charts, and Chad Powers flopped last year (we’ll see how season two does). I wouldn’t be surprised if their three biggest shows are off the air, er, streams within a year.
Quick Notes on TV
We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out…
- How Netflix/Will Ferrell’s The Hawk topped the half-hour charts…
- What surprising Prime Video show popped on the charts…
- Whether Apple TV has a new hit on their hands…
- How Netflix’s Little House on the Prairie reboot performed into its second week…
- If House of the Dragon is still one of the biggest shows on TV…
- How The Bear’s decline looks into its fourth week…
- The other misses in TV this week…
- And a whole lot more…
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