‘Ted Lasso’ Season 4 Enters The Pitch With Record Premiere Audience

Ted Lasso received a warm welcome upon its return to Apple TV earlier this month.

The Season 4 premiere drew 296.6 million viewing minutes in the U.S. across its August 4 and 5 launch window, per Nielsen data provided by Apple on Thursday. On August 5 alone, the season debut was the most-streamed program in the U.S. with more than 200 million viewing minutes.

Per Apple, this also marks the biggest launch ever for Apple TV.

It remains to be seen whether those numbers will be strong enough to elevate Ted Lasso onto Nielsen’s streaming Top 10 for the week of the Season 4 premiere. However, since those rankings don’t separate titles by season, it’s likely the series will make the cut since new seasons also generally drive a decent amount of viewers to revisit old episodes.

This is a positive start for the new season and a good indication that audiences are still excited for more Ted Lasso, even returning from a multi-year hiatus after the series supposedly ended in 2023.

Season 3, which at the time was slated to be the final season, drove the series to become the most-watched streaming original of its debut year, despite the fact that Apple TV+ has the fewest subscribers among the streamers that saw their content ranked in Nielsen’s streaming Top 10. The Jason Sudeikis-fronted series put up 16.9B minutes across all 24 episodes in 2023.

In Season 4, Ted returns to Richmond, taking on 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.

The new season reunites fan favorites, including Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt and Jeremy Swift, alongside new additions Tanya Reynolds, Jude Mack, Faye Marsay, Rex Hayes, Aisling Sharkey, Abbie Hern and Grant Feely.

Starring and executive produced by Sudeikis, Ted Lasso is also executive produced by Hunt, Joe Kelly, Jane Becker, Jamie Lee and Bill Wrubel. Jack Burditt serves as executive producer on Season 4 under a new overall deal with Apple TV. Goldstein serves as writer and executive producer alongside Leann Bowen. Sarah Walker and Phoebe Walsh serve as writers and producers for season four, and Sasha Garron co-produces. Julia Lindon writes for season four, and Dylan Marron serves as story editor. Bill Lawrence executive produces via his Doozer Productions, in association with Warner Bros. Television and Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group. Doozer’s Jeff Ingold and Liza Katzer also serve as executive producers.

The series was developed by Sudeikis, Lawrence, Kelly and Hunt, and is based on the preexisting format and characters from NBC Sports.