Picture: Netflix / Sony Pictures Television
Cobra Kai is back for its final season, and yesterday, we just got the first batch of figures for how well the series is doing. Let’s dive into the numbers and compare the early numbers to prior seasons and other series premieres in 2024.
Note: This is an expanded section from our Netflix top 10 report.
To bring you up to speed on the release format for this season, Netflix has opted (like an increasing number of its shows) to release Cobra Kai in multiple parts.
Unlike some split seasons, of course, Cobra Kai has been designed with its three-part nature in mind. One of the show’s co-creators, Jon Hurwitz, specifically said that the series had been created as being three mini-seasons, with each batch having a beginning, middle, and end.
Regarding reviews, most critics (and audiences) thus far have shared the same sentiment: The show remains funny and worth the investment but is handicapped by the split season in that it is designed to be binged.
Let’s get into the stats, then. In its first four days on Netflix, season 6 was watched 47.5 million hours, which, when you take the runtime, comes out to 14.8M views (or completed viewing equivalents). That “views” figure allows you to compare the show to other shows despite having different runtimes.
Now, while it topped the weekly TV English charts, those numbers don’t exist in a vacuum and can be compared.
“The first numbers are not good,” our data expert Frederic Durand writes, “With only 14.8M CVEs for its first four days, the season is already lagging behind the last two seasons, but that’s not the worst part.”
Cobra Kai – 14.8M views this week
Since it will be released in three batches, the first part of the season is shorter than the previous two seasons when they were released. So its number of views will drop faster (unless it pulls a Bridgerton season 3, but I don’t feel the same excitement around Cobra Kai as Bridgerton).
It might be possible that the release in three batches deters people from watching the first batch and that they will wait for the whole season to be released. After a few years of Netflix experimenting with batch releases (forced by the production delays and the programming needs), only two series managed to leverage this type of release for their benefit: Stranger Things and Bridgerton. All the other titles saw a steep decay rate compared to the previous seasons, and Cobra Kai now falls into that category.
As you can see from the graph above, viewership on season 6 is significantly down. If we compare the opening weekends (note that seasons 5 and 4 are both released on Fridays), then we can see that even despite having an extra day (season 6 part 1 released on a Thursday), the show is lagging, with Season 5 doing 17.1M views and season 4 doing 21.4M views.
Comparing the opening against other split series, the show slots in just between The Crown and The Witcher, with Bridgerton season 3 part 1 currently the winner with 45.1M views.
Don’t forget you can browse all of Netflix’s top 10 data in our search tool here or find all the data from Netflix itself on its satellite site here.
Cobra Kai season 6 continues with part 2 in its new earlier spot of November 15th, with the final batch of episodes coming in early 2025.
