Currently celebrating its 60th anniversary season, “Days of our Lives” has been a standout performer on Peacock for several years, consistently appearing on the streaming service’s daily top 10 most watched TV shows list even before becoming exclusive to the platform in September 2022.

In a report released last month, Luminate, a data and insights company that measures and tracks engagement and consumption across music, film and television, highlighted the long-running soap opera as an unlikely success story amid a competitive landscape while also breaking down its overall performance throughout calendar year 2024.

According to the service, Season 59 (169 episodes) of “Days of our Lives” ranked as the second most watched original program on Peacock with 3.1 billion minutes watched, while Season 60 (92 episodes) ranked fourth with 2.4 billion minutes. Only reality dating show “Love Island USA” did better on the streamer with 5.6 billion minutes watched during its 37-episode sixth season.

Closing out Peacock’s top five originals list, the 10-episode first season of political thriller “The Day of the Jackal” ranked third with 2.7 billion minutes watched while the 10-episode first season of the historical drama “Those About to Die” and the 12-episode second season of reality competition series “The Traitors” tied for fifth, each with 1.4 billion minutes.

The rest of the top 10 most watched original shows on Peacock were slightly above or below a billion minutes watched, led by “Bel-Air,” a drama series iteration based on the iconic comedy “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” which had 1.1 billion minutes watched for its 10-episode third season, ranking seventh on the streamer’s originals chart.

Most Watched Peacock Original TV Series in 2024 

Rank / Show	Minutes Watched (In Billions)	Season	Episodes
1. Love Island USA	5,600	6	37
2. Days of our Lives	3,100	59	169 (in 2024)
3. The Day of the Jackal	2,700	1	10
4. Days of our Lives	2,400	60	92 (in 2024)
5. Those About to Die	1,400	1	10
— The Traitors	1,400	2	12
7. Bel-Air	1,100	3	10
8. The Tattooist of Auschwitz	1,000	1	6
9. Ted	900	1	7
— Apples Never Fall	900	1	7

Source: Luminate Streaming Viewership (M) December 29, 2023 – January 2, 2025 – Excludes Sports and WWE Content

Noting that each new season of “Days of our Lives” runs from August to August, the service said that Season 60 amassed 3.8 billion minutes watched between August 26, 2024 and March 30, 2025, citing the 156 episodes released during the reporting period. Further, Season 60 remained on the overall top 50 streaming original TV shows chart for 31 out of the 32 weeks, peaking at No. 17.

In its 2024 year-end film & TV report, Luminate revealed that the first season of the Disney+ original series “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” had 3.070 billion minutes watched, while season one of “The Acolyte,” also on Disney+, had 2.673 billion minutes watched. Meanwhile, Season 60 of the long-running soap opera had more minutes watched since release than that of such high profile shows as “Severance” on Apple TV+ (Season 2), “A Man on the Inside” on Netflix, “Only Murders in the Building” on Hulu/Hulu on Disney+ (Season 4), “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” on Prime Video (Season 2) and “The Pitt” on Max (soon to be re-branded back to HBO Max).

In 2023, Variety reported “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” was estimated to have cost somewhere between $12 million and $15 million per episode, while sources tell Soap Opera Network that a complete season of “Days of our Lives” (north of 250 episodes) is estimated to cost somewhere between $20 million and $30 million, down a bit in cost from when the show was still airing on NBC. Meanwhile, a full season of “General Hospital” on ABC is estimated to cost between $40 and $45 million.

Factoring in the eight most popular streaming services tracked by Luminate and each platform’s share of consumption among U.S. original content viewing time, the performance of “Days of our Lives” is even more noteworthy for Peacock considering Netflix leads all streamers with a 63.5% share, followed by Prime Video in second with 8.5%, Paramount+ in third with 7.8%, Apple TV+ in fourth with 5.3%, and Hulu rounding out the top five with 5.1%. Disney+ ranked sixth with a 4.4% share, followed by Peacock in seventh with 3.1% and Max in eighth place at a mere 1.5%. Falling into the “Other” category at a combined 0.8% were AMC+ (0.4%), Tubi (0.3%) and Discovery+ (0.1%).

Although the performance of “Days of our Lives” can’t be viewed as a pure apples-to-apples comparison, considering most other streaming originals consist of eight to 13 episodes per season, Luminate points out that the show is making a case for itself from a higher-volume approach while maintaining a “steady daily viewership across hundreds of modestly budgeted episodes,” making it a solid bet for Peacock among a foray of more than 400 streaming originals that are currently in various stages of production and awaiting premiere dates this year alone across all platforms, 14 of which are at Peacock.

In April, Comcast, parent of NBCUniversal, which includes Peacock under its umbrella, reported the streamer had 41 million paid subscribers through Q1 2025. The service gained 5 million additional subscribers from Q4 2024 following the addition of Charter Communications subscribers, and was also up from Q3 2024.

Note: Unlike the ratings data regularly published here at Soap Opera Network, which are generally based on Live+Same Day figures compiled by Nielsen, total minutes watched is the standard for tracking the overall performance of streaming content with Nielsen and Luminate being just two of several providers utilized by streamers in monitoring the viewing habits of subscribers.

Streaming viewership for non-originals on Peacock was unavailable at press time. This includes shows like “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and the recently renewed One Chicago franchise (“Chicago Med,” “Chicago Fire” and “Chicago P.D.”).

Note: The post ‘Days Of Our Lives’: A Peacock Success Story appeared first on the Soap Opera Network website.
 

 

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If episodes are 40 minutes(?), that averages 436,742 viewers per episode for season 59 & 652,173 for season 60.

If the views weren't there, I doubt it would have last 2.5 years and counting as being a solo Peacock property.  

I wouldn't even mind if one of these streamers didn't a primetime soap exclusively on a platform like Peacock that drops an episode a week 52 weeks a year with no breaks.  It would be a good compromise between the old school day time and prime time formats.

Genuine question: how is 600.000 viewers on streaming considered more successful than 2 million people watching on television? I don’t understand it and the whole ‘6 billion minutes watched’ sounds like a really pointless metric to me. 

48 minutes ago, Aback said:

Genuine question: how is 600.000 viewers on streaming considered more successful than 2 million people watching on television? I don’t understand it and the whole ‘6 billion minutes watched’ sounds like a really pointless metric to me. 

I don't think it's about comparing it to tv but within streaming thats a good number of people subscribing to your service, paying a monthly fee and many with commercials which is even more revenue. 

In the streaming world Days is good value for it's cost. When you consider it's budget and the fact that it drives year round subscriptions, it's a big value to a platform like Peacock which is trying to become profitable and is specifically looking for programming that can drive those year round subscriptions.

Edited May 26May 26 by Chris B

14 hours ago, Aback said:

Genuine question: how is 600.000 viewers on streaming considered more successful than 2 million people watching on television? I don’t understand it and the whole ‘6 billion minutes watched’ sounds like a really pointless metric to me. 

I agree. It is really silly how they always report these billions of minutes watched. I would think that having a show of 10 episode watched 2 billion times is better than having a soap opera with 200 episodes watched 3.5 billion times. Of course DAYS will have amassed more minutes watched, if it has hundreds episodes more per year. This metric makes no sense to me.

But hey, if Peacock is happy... 

The guy that I follow for weekly streaming ratings on YouTube always converts these billions of minutes into views per episodes to have a better measure. So for example Traitors sometimes even appears in weekly top 10. 

13 hours ago, Chris B said:

In the streaming world Days is good value for it's cost. When you consider it's budget and the fact that it drives year round subscriptions, it's a big value to a platform like Peacock which is trying to become profitable and is specifically looking for programming that can drive those year round subscriptions.

I can see this logic actually. But I usually never see this mentioned as the reason for its success. Usually all the streamers are just bragging about the billions of minutes watched.

14 minutes ago, Manny said:

I agree. It is really silly how they always report these billions of minutes watched. I would think that having a show of 10 episode watched 2 billion times is better than having a soap opera with 200 episodes watched 3.5 billion times. Of course DAYS will have amassed more minutes watched, if it has hundreds episodes more per year. This metric makes no sense to me.

But hey, if Peacock is happy... 

The problem is that the 10 episode series is likely going to cost $50-100 million (more in some cases) and those people will cancel their subscription when the series ends. That creates an unwinnable situation where you constantly have to spend those large amounts to churn out constant hits to sustain subscriptions. That's why all of these streaming services are in so much debt.

14 minutes ago, Manny said:

I can see this logic actually. But I usually never see this mentioned as the reason for its success. Usually all the streamers are just bragging about the billions of minutes watched.

Around the time Peacock picked up Days they did mention that their goal was to start trying to drive long term subscriptions. In addition to Days they've really leaned into sports and live programming which can help drive year round traffic.

28 minutes ago, Chris B said:

The problem is that the 10 episode series is likely going to cost $50-100 million (more in some cases) and those people will cancel their subscription when the series ends. That creates an unwinnable situation where you constantly have to spend those large amounts to churn out constant hits to sustain subscriptions. That's why all of these streaming services are in so much debt.

Around the time Peacock picked up Days they did mention that their goal was to start trying to drive long term subscriptions. In addition to Days they've really leaned into sports and live programming which can help drive year round traffic.

I agree that DAYS is probably doing better from the cost perspective. 

But my point was just that I wouldn't say that DAYS is one of the most watched shows on Peacock. Because if it took DAYS 169 episodes to gather 3.1 billion minutes, but it only took another show 10 episodes to take 1.4 billion minutes, it's very clear. By comparison, 10 episodes of DAYS would not even hit 1 billion minutes, not even close. 

Better by cost, but not by views, is all I'm saying  

Edited May 26May 26 by Manny

Also - if they're happy with the result, why would they want to invest further? The formula is working the way it is for now, so I don't see anything changing budget-wise, unfortunately. I'm just trying to unspin these disingenuous press releases.

Edited May 26May 26 by Aback

11 minutes ago, Aback said:

Also - if they're happy with the result, why would they want to invest further? The formula is working the way it is for now, so I don't see anything changing budget-wise, unfortunately. I'm just trying to unspin these disingenuous press releases.

I don't think anyone expects a budget increase. They just wish there was one.

Sorry to come back on this... but I wonder how streamers even count the profitability of a show. On network tv is simple.. you have your budget and then you have the ad revenue. If ad revenue is higher, you are earning money, if it's lower, you lose money (in a simplest way explained, surely there are some other factors..)

But I imagine streamers just have to sum up all the budgets/acquiring costs of all the different programs and then all the subscription profit. Because I just don't get how they would split the subscription profits per show. Because if I pay 10 USD per month, but I watch two shows, do they give each show 5 USD from me? What if I watch 5 episodes (but not the full season) of one show, and a whole season of the other show?

For example, I have had Netflix since 2015, never cancelled my subscription in that period. I watch a bunch of stuff. That cannot possible say anything to Netflix about where to allocate my subscription profits. On the other hand, I pay Disney+ since it began and in the last year, I didn't watch anything there (I know, I'm silly to pay if I don't watch, but that's a different topic).. You cannot assign my subscription to any show on Disney+. 

I just don't get how they can calculate the profit per show.. I assume that shows that earn basically no views are easy to just cancel. But others? I don't know... anyone has ideas?  

EDIT: Was browsing now to see what the budgets are for DAYS and Traitors (I am using Traitors as example only because that's literally the only show I know from Peacock). And I found here on SON that DAYS budget until 2023 was 37.5 mil USD. I found online that Traitors budget is between 10-20 mil USD. So even if DAYS budget is cut at Peacock, surely it wasn't cut by 50%. So DAYS is still running a higher cost annually, while Traitors get like 7 times more the viewers per episode. 

I am not trying to ruin this for DAYS fans, really, I was just perplexed how Peacock can claim that DAYS their 2nd most watched show, when it clearly isn't. And again, if Peacock is happy with these figures, great..  

Edited May 26May 26 by Manny

38 minutes ago, Manny said:

I agree that DAYS is probably doing better from the cost perspective. 

But my point was just that I wouldn't say that DAYS is one of the most watched shows on Peacock. Because if it took DAYS 169 episodes to gather 3.1 billion minutes, but it only took another show 10 episodes to take 1.4 billion minutes, it's very clear. By comparison, 10 episodes of DAYS would not even hit 1 billion minutes, not even close. 

Better by cost, but not by views, is all I'm saying  

It's not network tv. A 10 episode show getting 1.4 billion views in 3 months is not the same as a year-round financial investment which is what they get out of a show like Days. The goal is to maintain a subscription overtime.

3 minutes ago, Chris B said:

It's not network tv. A 10 episode show getting 1.4 billion views in 3 months is not the same as a year-round financial investment which is what they get out of a show like Days. The goal is to maintain a subscription overtime.

I get it. I know what network tv is and what streamers are. The math is still not mathing. But okay, I will stop  

13 minutes ago, Manny said:

I get it. I know what network tv is and what streamers are. The math is still not mathing. But okay, I will stop  

You're not wrong when you consider none of the streamers are profitable but Peacock has been reducing it's debt each year and seems to be more on track than the other streamers are. They have to find a way to cut costs to be sustainable. You can't just keep churning out these short lived expensive shows hoping for a miracle.

I think the key is affordable programming and also ad supported tiers for additional revenue. HBO Max recently had a big success story with The Pitt which was a modestly budgeted 15 episode series. That needs to be the model. They should be striving for shows with more episodes that can be made for less. 

10 minutes ago, Chris B said:

You're not wrong when you consider none of the streamers are profitable but Peacock has been reducing it's debt each year and seems to be more on track than the other streamers are. They have to find a way to cut costs to be sustainable. You can't just keep churning out these short lived expensive shows hoping for a miracle.

I think the key is affordable programming and also ad supported tiers for additional revenue. HBO Max recently had a big success story with The Pitt which was a modestly budgeted 15 episode series. That needs to be the model. They should be striving for shows with more episodes that can be made for less. 

Absolutely. I agree. Streamers need to stop putting so much money into their shows, because it's insane and unsustainable. 

Also, each episode has ads that run depending on the level of membership on Peacock

So Days has views, plus whatever $ comes from the ads, and I'm sure Peacock can figure who signed up and the content they're watching after signing up.

When Passions was on Direct Tv, what caused them to not continue beyond the one year wasn't due to viewership... but a lack of subscription #s.   So I'm wondering if Days initially was judged based on the # of people that signed up for Peacock.. and now it's a combination of views, ad revenue, and any new subscribers coming on.

Edited May 27May 27 by Soaplovers