Value of Korean Hit Estimated at almost $900 Million  

Squid Game, the nine-part Netflix sensation from director Hwang Donghyuk, quickly gripped the world after its September 17 launch on the streaming platform, eventually ascending to the top rank in all of the streamer’s global markets. Last week, Netflix revealed that the show scored their biggest ever launch, with 111 million subscribers tuning in over during the show’s launch. 

That total was significantly higher than the previous top opening for a series when Bridgerton reached 82 million viewers earlier this year over its first four weeks. It also eclipsed the record of the best-performing film on Netflix, Extraction, which was viewed by 99 million accounts during its launch. 

However, new figures from a document obtained by Bloomberg suggest that the number of accounts that sampled at least two minutes of the show may have reached 132 million within its first 23 days, with two-thirds of those accounts finishing the entire series within that time frame.

The report also revealed that the hit is estimated to have had an impact value of USD 891.1 million for the company. Since titles on Netflix are part of a package, the company uses different metrics to assess the value of their content, which included counting new subscriptions or views from accounts with low activity, which are considered more likely to cancel.

Squid Game’s economic success is even more impressive when taking into account the show’s production cost, which is estimated to have been USD 2.4 million per episode, for a total series cost of USD 21.4 million.