The Challenge’ Brings in Over a Million Viewers in the U.S.

The Big Picture

• Squid Game: The Challenge draws massive viewership and reaches 1.1 million households within its first five days, surpassing other reality shows on Netflix like The Circle and Physical: 100.
• The spin-off reality series benefits from the popularity of the original South Korean hit Squid Game, appealing to diverse audiences and over-indexing in Black and Hispanic households.
• Despite criticism for distorting the original series’ message, Squid Game: The Challenge manages to be compelling television, and its long-term success and Netflix’s takeaways are yet to be determined.

Squid Game: The Challenge has hit Netflix and, to little surprise, it’s a hit on the platform. With that success though, has come a potential lawsuit from contestants with unnamed participants claiming they suffered injuries during the filming process. Still, that hasn’t stopped audiences from watching the Netflix series. Based on the popular Korean series Squid Game, the reality show lets contestants play similar games to those in the series for a cash prize. Featuring childhood games like Red Light, Green Light, and Marbles, The Challenge has much of the same setup as the original show but with fans playing for money, and obviously not being killed off as characters were in the original series.

The series was viewed in roughly 1.1M U.S. households to the series within the first five days of its availability on Netflix, according to Samba TV via Deadline. Compared to other reality shows for the network, it’s clear that The Challenge is more successful for Netflix than shows like The Circle, which brought in 264,000 U.S. households in the same window, and Physical: 100, which brought in 396,000 in the same period. Full totals have yet to be revealed as Samba TV doesn’t factor in viewing on mobile devices.

“Modeled after the hugely popular South Korean hit Squid Game, new spinoff reality series Squid Game: The Challenge saw massive viewership in its first few days released on Netflix. The series’ broad, worldwide audience likely helped contribute to its success. Diverse viewers also helped propel the series to reach 1.1 million households viewing in its first five days, with Black and Hispanic households over-indexing by strong double digits compared to the average U.S. household,” Cole Strain, VP and Head of Research and Development at Samba TV, said in a statement.

‘Squid Game: The Challenge’ Benefits From Its Outlandish Premise

Squid Game as a show worked to take on the idea of capitalism through its emotionally devastating characters trapped in a cruel system, and a reality show based on that seemed to come as a cheap misunderstanding of what the original series stood for. Yet Squid Game: The Challenge does seem to work as compelling television for audiences. It is not without its faults, as previously stated, and it will be interesting to see how the series holds up over time. What that means for the show as a whole and what Netflix learns from the show’s success remains to be seen.

Stay tuned at Collider for further updates.

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