According to Nielsen, in the US, OPLA viewership in 2026 is matching, if not IMPROVING on, OPLA viewership in 2023

Nielsen ratings in the US have been pretty consistent between 2023 and 2026. My source is Nielsen's top 10 ratings that they post on their website weekly, but they don't seem to keep a running archive like Netflix. I had to do a deep dive in to the internet archive to get season 2's Week 3 to compare.

https://www.nielsen.com/data-center/top-ten/

Season 1's first four weeks:

• 1.311 billion minutes viewed > 1.389b > 663 million minutes viewed > 479m
• Cumulative: 3.842 billion minutes viewed

Season 2's first four weeks (combined with season 1 views):

• 1.618 billion minutes viewed (THE GOLDEN RATIO) > 1.270b > 671 million minutes viewed > 427m
• Cumulative: 3.926 billion minutes viewed

Now, at first blush, you might be going "wait a minute, that's season 1 and season 2 combined" and you would be right, but that doesn't mean the numbers should be double or necessarily even significantly higher. Take a look at Virgin River season 7's first four weeks:

• 1.387b > 1.594b > 971m > 588m

To Virgin River's season 5 premiere (which was split in two)

• 1.922b > 2.054b > 1.235b > 709m

Those Season 5 numbers are based on 52 episodes available versus Season 7 with 74 episodes available, yet season 7's numbers are down significantly. You'd think they'd be higher with 22 more episodes available, but I don't think that's really how things work -- we know Netflix is happy with Virgin River's performance and we know it's doing well, but the amount of Virgin River being watched OVERALL is down fairly significantly in the US compared to where it was in 2023. We know the majority of that viewership is the new season anyway.

I guess my point is, the amount of One Piece live-action being watched in the US, according to Nielsen, is slightly higher in March 2026 than it was in September 2023. How much does it really matter if they're watching season 1 vs season 2?

My takeaway from this is that despite the notable decline worldwide (that is more indicative of a broader issue with Netflix viewership decreasing across the board versus an issue with OP's performance), in the US, One Piece appears to be outpacing itself in 2026 compared to 2023. And that's a pretty big win for OP.

I think there's a bit of a mirage that was cast over OP's performance in the US based on Netflix's data because OP never topped the top 10 here, and debuted at #4, but there are tons of factors that go into that. This happens all the time in movies where like Event Movie 1 debuts with relatively little competition at #1 with 80 million USD earned, then Event Movie 2 comes out and does 120 million USD, but it opens the same weekend as Avatar 4 and Barbie 2, so it's #3 this time. It doesn't matter that it dropped two spots in the top 10 when its box office is up 50%. (I think Zootopia 2 is the latest real world example because it outperformed the first one significantly, but if I remember right, it opened right next to Wicked which started even stronger before Z2 overtook it a few weeks later)

Also, disclaimer: I am aware that Nielsen's methodology has come under fire in recent months and there's some concerns about its integrity, but it's the closest thing we have to public-facing viewership data in the US, and regardless, those numbers still look very good.