‘Ted Lasso’ season 4 breaks Apple record

“Ted Lasso” made a strong return to Apple TV last week, with the Season 4 premiere pulling in 296.6 million minutes watched over the course of Aug. 4-5.

That total, measured by Nielsen, makes the episode the biggest launch in the history of Apple TV, outpacing all previous seasons of “Ted Lasso” in addition to buzzy titles like “Severance” and “Pluribus.” Nielsen also reports that “Ted Lasso” Season 4 was the most-streamed program in the U.S. on Aug. 5 alone, with more than 200 million minutes watched that day.

The “Ted Lasso” Season 4 premiere also made a solid showing in terms of estimated views — a metric used by streamers like Netflix to account for differences in length between programs — reaching 7.1 million. (That statistic was calculated by dividing the total number of time the episode was streamed by its 42-minute runtime.)

Set three years after Season 3, Season 4 sees Ted (Jason Sudeikis) return to Richmond to take on, per the official logline, “his biggest challenge yet: coaching a second-division women’s football team. Throughout the course of the season, Ted and the team learn to leap before they look, taking chances they never thought they would.” Along with Sudeikis, returning stars include Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt and Jeremy Swift. New stars include Tanya Reynolds, Jude Mack, Faye Marsay, Rex Hayes, Aisling Sharkey, Abbie Hern and Grant Feely.

“Ted Lasso” is executive produced by Sudeikis; Hunt; Joe Kelly; Jane Becker; Jamie Lee; Bill Wrubel; Jack Burditt through a new overall deal with Apple TV; Goldstein and Leann Bowen, who also serve as writers; and Bill Lawrence, Jeff Ingold and Liza Katzer through Lawrence’s Doozer Productions banner in association with Warner Bros. Television and Universal Television. The series was developed by Sudeikis, Lawrence, Kelly and Hunt based on IP from NBC Sports.

-Variety