Netflix has now put hard numbers behind just how big a win the GTA 6 exclusivity deal turned out to be.
The streaming giant secured a six-hour exclusivity window last week to premiere 27 minutes of Grand Theft Auto VI footage before it hit YouTube. Demand was reportedly high enough to briefly crash the platform, and Netflix later confirmed a 35% spike in overall users during the window. It was also confirmed that the arrangement was pitched to Netflix by Rockstar itself.
Netflix has now published its weekly Top 10 chart data covering August 24th–30th, and the Extended Look topped the "English film" category with 31.1 million views. The clip hit No. 1 in 87 of the 93 countries Netflix tracks — a near-total global sweep for a piece of game marketing.
By comparison, the YouTube upload, which went live a few hours after the Netflix debut, has pulled in 17 million views. That's a notable gap considering the YouTube version sits behind no paywall at all, while the Netflix cut required an active subscription to watch.
Part of that gap comes down to how differently the two platforms count a "view." YouTube recently changed its methodology so a view registers the moment a video starts playing. Netflix's bar is considerably higher: it counts total watch time and divides it by the title's runtime to produce a "full-runtime equivalent." Under that system, one household watching the 27-minute trailer twice counts the same as two separate households watching it once — meaning Netflix's 31.1 million figure represents a much stricter threshold than YouTube's raw view count.
Even against Netflix's own chart, the Extended Look wasn't close to being challenged. The second-place title, The Whisper Man, managed 23.2 million views — nearly 8 million behind GTA 6, despite having an extra day of availability on the chart before the trailer's August 27th release.
Grand Theft Auto VI is set to release on November 19.
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