UPDATED: Netflix‘s presentation of the 29thScreen Actors Guild Awards show garnered more than 1.1 million views on Sunday for the livestream on YouTube, and 1.5 million overall in the first 12 hours across YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
The YouTube total comprises views tallied for the 2023 SAG Awards‘ main feed and the audio descriptive feed. The SAG Awards ceremony livestream — which ran 2 hours and 14 minutes and carried no ads — is available to rewatch on Netflix’s YouTube channel.
The viewing total does not include breakout clips that Netflix posted during the awards show on YouTube and social media, including the acceptance speeches by the cast members of the night’s big winner, “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” For example, Michelle Yeoh’sspeech after her historic win for best performance by a female actor in a leading role (becoming the first Asian woman to win a leading film acting award) had more than 58,000 YouTube views as of Monday morning, and Ke Huy Quan’s speech for male actor in a supporting role (the first Asian male to win a film acting trophy at the SAG Awards) had more than 55,000.
SEE ALSO: SAG Awards Winners 2023: Full List
The way YouTube counts overall video views is different from the way Nielsen tabulates TV viewing metrics, so that is not an apples-to-apple comparison between this year’s SAG Awards viewership and past years. During Sunday’s livestream, the SAG Awards on YouTube averaged around 230,000-250,000 concurrent viewers across both feeds. In 2022, the kudocast drew an average 1.8 million total viewers for the simulcast on TBS and TNT; the year before that, the SAG Awards averaged 957,000 total viewers on TNT/TBS.
According to a SAG Awards rep, the 2023 SAG Awards ceremony livestream generated more than 1.5 million views across YouTube, Facebook and Twitter in the first 12 hours. Clips of the ceremony generated an additional 19.4 million views across platforms; in addition, the SAG Awards was the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter on Sunday night.
“As this was a transitional year for the SAG Awards, it was broadcast on social media with Netflix and other media partners in lieu of a broadcast partner,” the SAG Awards spokesperson said.
This January, Netflix announced a multiyear deal to stream the SAG Awards. This year’s broadcast was streamed on Netflix’s YouTube channel, and plans to stream the event live globally on Netflix itself starting in 2024.
