Picture: AMC / HBO
Over the past few years, we’ve seen Netflix go on a licensing blitz. It’s down to several different reasons with Netflix looking to plug in gaps in its lineup thanks to the strikes, them looking for engagement in whatever form it can come in, and third parties looking to boost the profile of their shows and perhaps more importantly, get in some vital cash.
For this, we will exclusively use the Netflix Engagement Reports, which cover all Netflix viewing globally between 2023 and 2024. Use our search tool to dive deep into those reports to see how well various shows and movies performed over time.
Most Popular HBO Shows on Netflix in 2023/2024
There are a bunch of asterisks when trying to calculate the most popular HBO shows on Netflix. So let’s run through them:
- HBO shows weren’t all added at the same time on Netflix, so we need to take this into account.
- HBO shows added to Netflix mainly were added to the same regions, including the US, Latin American countries, and a few European territories. True Blood is one of the key ones that wasn’t added to Netflix in the US, so we’ll leave that out.
- Netflix’s engagement reports cover the entirety of 2023 and 2024, so we’ll need to consider the number of days between the addition of the title and the last day of the engagement report.
- More generally, Netflix’s views system favors shorter seasons, but we’ll have to consider the total runtime of all episodes across all seasons rather than individual seasons.
That said, our top-level analysis suggests that Warrior, which was hoping for a season 4 revival at Netflix, ultimately took home the most daily views in the period of its addition to Netflix, with 38,000 viewing equivalents per day.
| Title | Added to Netflix | Days on Netflix | Combined Hours | Combined Views (All Runtime) | Daily Views Equivalent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Warrior (Seasons 1-3) | 2024-02-16 | 319 | 309,100,000 | 12,241,584 | 38,000 |
| Sex and the City (Seasons 1-6) | 2024-04-01 | 274 | 413,400,000 | 9,231,120 | 34,000 |
| Band of Brothers (Limited Series) | 2023-09-15 | 473 | 158,700,000 | 15,200,000 | 32,100 |
| The Pacific (Limited Series) | 2023-09-15 | 473 | 132,400,000 | 14,900,000 | 31,500 |
| Ballers (S1-5) | 2023-08-16 | 503 | 201,500,000 | 8,942,308 | 17,800 |
| Insecure (S1-4) | 2023-07-03 | 547 | 92,300,000 | 4,227,481 | 7,700 |
| Six Feet Under (Seasons 1-5) | 2023-11-01 | 426 | 158,500,000 | 2,777,452 | 7,000 |
Using this formula, we can also stack it up against some other Netflix Originals, which isn’t fair by any stretch, given that these are available globally, but still worth the exercise to put those daily numbers above into context. On the high end, you’ve got Wednesday, which had the equivalent of 179,000 completions every day in that 2023-2024 period, but that’s undoubtedly skewed because it’s much newer. Looking back at some older titles, Grace and Frankie’s seven seasons pulled in the daily equivalent of 7,524 completions, and House of Cards had 5,912 equivalent complete watches.
What if we did the first season of each HBO show? That would put them all on a much more level playing field, but the results come in the same order:
- Warrior (S1) – 53,000 viewing equivalents daily
- Sex and the City (S1) – 53,000 viewing equivalents daily
- Band of Brothers (Limited Series) – 32,100 viewing equivalents daily
- The Pacific (Limited Series) – 31,500 viewing equivalents daily
- Ballers (S1) – 27,200 viewing equivalents daily
- Insecure (S1) – 11,000 viewing equivalents daily
- Six Feet Under (S1) – 11,000 viewing equivalents daily
Most Popular AMC Shows on Netflix in 2023/2024
In 2024, Netflix struck a deal with the network to bring a dozen-plus of their shows to Netflix. That occurred on August 19th, with all but a couple arriving on the same date as each other. Lots of caveats once again, so let’s dive into them!
- Better Call Saul, Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead were all available before August 19th, 2024. In addition, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are available globally, whereas The Walking Dead is available in select regions but not all countries. These tites we’ll use the viewing data for all of 2023 and 2024 whereas we’ve only got the H2 data for 2024 for the others.
- All the other titles on this list, with one exception, are only available on Netflix US. Gangs of London was also made available on Netflix in the UK as well as the US.
- Into the Badlands was available on Netflix in the US prior to its re-addition on August 19th, but was removed in late 2023. To make it a fair comparison with the others, we’ve excluded performance ahead of its initial departure.
That said, the winner is Dark Winds from the new arrivals and Breaking Bad from the previously available titles:
| Title | Added to Netflix | Days on Netflix | Combined Hours | Combined Views (All Runtime) | Daily Average Views (Rounded) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dark Winds (Seasons 1-2) | 2024-08-19 | 134 | 65,000,000 | 7,090,883 | 52,900 |
| Breaking Bad (Seasons 1-5) | 2023-01-01 | 730 | 1,610,200,000 | 32,562,184 | 45,000 |
| A Discovery of Witches (Seasons 1-3) | 2024-08-19 | 134 | 98,900,000 | 5,345,946 | 39,900 |
| Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches (Season 1) | 2024-08-19 | 134 | 29,600,000 | 5,000,000 | 37,300 |
| Gangs of London (Seasons 1-2) | 2024-08-19 | 134 | 60,300,000 | 3,691,844 | 28,000 |
| The Walking Dead (Seasons 1-8) | 2023-01-01 | 730 | 2,231,900,000 | 16,479,699 | 23,000 |
| The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon (Season 1) | 2024-08-19 | 134 | 15,700,000 | 2,900,000 | 22,000 |
| Better Call Saul (Seasons 1-6) | 2023-01-01 | 730 | 754,000,000 | 14,352,801 | 20,000 |
| Preacher (Seasons 1-4) | 2024-08-19 | 134 | 85,500,000 | 2,651,163 | 20,000 |
| The Terror (Season 1) | 2024-08-19 | 134 | 18,100,000 | 2,300,000 | 17,000 |
| Interview with the Vampire (Season 1) | 2024-08-19 | 134 | 12,500,000 | 2,200,000 | 16,000 |
| Kevin Can F**k Himself (Seasons 1-2) | 2024-08-19 | 134 | 23,500,000 | 2,046,450 | 15,000 |
| Monsieur Spade (Season 1) | 2024-08-19 | 134 | 10,700,000 | 2,000,000 | 15,000 |
| That Dirty Black Bag (Season 1) | 2024-08-19 | 134 | 11,800,000 | 1,800,000 | 13,000 |
| Fear the Walking Dead (Seasons 1-8) | 2024-08-19 | 134 | 105,600,000 | 1,227,669 | 9,200 |
| Into the Badlands (Seasons 1-3) | 2024-08-19 | 134 | 13,400,000 | 586,433 | 4,000 |
Picture: What’s on Netflix
There we have it! The most popular AMC and HBO shows on Netflix from the past two years. Lots of caveats to take into account, but I was surprised by how much more popular AMC titles were over HBO by doing the maths, especially when you consider that most HBO shows were added to regions beyond just the United States.
