Dancing with the Stars is off to a dazzling start with last night’s Season 35 premiere on ABC and Disney+.
The episode, which saw only the male celebrities and their pro partners compete, attracted 6.67 million total live + same-day viewers, according to preliminary data from Nielsen. When the company’s Big Data + Panel numbers are available later in the week, that number is likely to rise.
That’s a 24% increase over the Season 34 premiere to deliver the show’s biggest premiere audience in six years. Among adults 18-49 specifically, the season opener jumped 40% to a 1.48 rating — the show’s best performance in the demo in nearly a decade.
In fact, funny enough, the premiere was the top entertainment telecast among adults 18-49 across all of television since ABC’s presentation of The Oscars. Dancing with the Stars is surging among young women, unsurprisingly, given the shows and influencer circles that it has been mining from for celebrity contestants. Disney says that the premiere delivered a 2.53 rating among women 18-34, making it the best premiere delivery in 13 years.
This all bodes very well for the new season, especially the big boost in total viewers over the Season 34 premiere. Last season became a juggernaut for Disney, ending with the best finale audience in nearly a decade.
The kickoff continues Wednesday night with premiere night two, when the ladies will take the stage with their professional partners. This year’s cast is one of the biggest ever, so the premiere was split into two nights with an elimination after each. Disney hasn’t explicitly confirmed the premiere vote tally yet, since the women have yet to compete, but online voting crashed on night one and host Alfonso Ribeiro said toward the end of the episode that they’d experienced record-breaking text votes.
Last season’s premiere was only one episode on a Tuesday night, so these would be the comparable numbers, though it’s worth noting that some of the season’s biggest “gets” won’t hit the ballroom floor until Wednesday night, including Maura Higgins, Ciara Miller, Julia Stiles, and more. So, it’s entirely possible that Wednesday does even better.
More data will be available later this week. Dancing with the Stars is produced by BBC Studios.
