Arcane – Picture: Netflix / Riot Games
Arcane has wrapped up its first season on Netflix and has been instantly given a second season order (and likely more to come). But how well has the series performed on Netflix and how well is it doing outside of Netflix?
Before diving into the stats, you probably already know the series is performing well critically. It still holds a 100% critics score on RottenTomatoes and a 98% audience score. Over on IMDb, the series is sitting at a 9.4/10. That makes it one of Netflix’s best critically received titles in 2021 and one of its best of all time.
Netflix Top 10 Data for Arcane
We don’t quite yet have the full picture for top 10 data so far so this is definitely a work in progress.
The show has ranked in the TV and overall top 10s in over 52 countries reaching the number 1 spot in many of them.
The United States has been one of the weaker regions for Arcane it’s worth noting. The series has peaked on Netflix US at number 2 before quickly falling down.
The days Arcane has been the global number 1 are:
- November 8th
- November 9th
- November 14th
- November 15th
- November 16th
- November 21st
Arcane’s main global rivals in the top 10s during its release window have been Narcos: Mexico, Squid Game, and Hellbound.
As we alluded to in our article when Arcane first took the throne from Squid Game (which had dominated the top 10s for almost two months). Regions that are seeing the series perform the best are often those with higher player counts or search interest in the game such as Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
As of November 24th, 2021 – the series is still in the global top 60 and sitting as the number 2 TV series with 585 points.
Netflix Global Top 10s for November 24th
Viewing Hours Data for Arcane
Since the arrival of Arcane, Netflix has released its brand new top 10 site that not only gives us an expanded on the top 10s we speak about above but also gives us actual viewing metrics in the form of hours viewed of a particular title.
As of November 25th, 2021 the show has racked up 72,590,000 hours viewed globally.
| Time Period | Viewing Hours (Million) |
|---|---|
| November 8-14 | 34.17 |
| November 15 -21 | 38.42 |
It’s worth noting that the series was released on November 6th so we’re missing data between November 6th and 7th.
This viewing hours data is still relatively new so if you’d like a great post looking into the ins and outs of Netflix’s new data, Entertainment Strategy Guy has an excellent rundown here.
IMDb MovieMeter Data for Arcane
We love IMDb data here at What’s on Netflix. After all, IMDb is the biggest movie database on the planet attracting half a billion hits a month according to SimilarWeb.
The MovieMeter is refreshed every Monday and is a “measure of popularity” and “based on page views of pages related to a film” or in this case, a series.
Between October 31st to November 7th the series was sitting at number 362 in the charts. The next week, November 7th to 14th, it rocketed to the third biggest title on the platform (only Red Notice and Spider-Man: No Way Home beat it).
For the week when the final three episodes launched, it was at position number 5 behind Red Notice, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings, and Amazon’s The Wheel of Time.
IMDb MovieMeter for Arcane as of November 25th
We’re expecting the show to now slowly drop down the pecking order over time but where will its eventual floor be? Time will tell.
Google Trends Data
Early indications are that interest in both League of Legends and Arcane has spiked since the release onto Netflix.
Google Trends graph for League of Legends (blue) and Arcane (red)
While League of Legends’ interest has peaked love the past 12 months, zooming out to global interest in the past 5 years reveals that the interest is roughly the same as October 2019 and November 2017.
League of Legends Google interest between November 2016 and November 2021
Has Arcane increased the League of Legends player counts?
One data point we can look to is the player population for League of Legends but that doesn’t currently suggest a big influx of new players.
According to ActivePlayer.io, League of Legends monthly average players has roughly stayed in line with months prior and hasn’t yet seen an explosion in new users.
League of Legends player count graph as of November 25th – Picture: ActivePlayer.io
It’s worth noting that on November 1st, Riot Games celebrated 180 million players across its multiple franchises.
Does Arcane make the case for weekly episodes?
Arcane is among the very few Netflix shows that have been released globally on Netflix in a weekly fashion. It’s not quite one episode a week like all legacy media but it is batches of 3 at a time over the course of three weeks. Netflix only uses the format when it has to (international distribution like K-dramas) or primarily with reality TV.
No chart better demonstrates the benefit Arcane saw to releasing weekly than the Netflix US top 10s. You can see every time a new batch of episodes is released on Netflix which rocketed the series up the charts.
We’ll keep this post updated over time with more data points as and when they become available but let us know down below if you’ve been enjoying Arcane on Netflix.