‘The Traitors: New Blood’ Attracts Fresh Meat On NBC & Peacock

EXCLUSIVE: American audiences are buying into NBCUniversal’s expansion of The Traitors.

The Traitors: New Blood has raked in more than 7 million new cross-platform viewers to the franchise within its first two weeks, according to internal data. That’s a 45% expansion of the franchise’s cross-platform reach, bringing it to more than 22 million total viewers, NBCU says.

Per the company, 65% of New Blood’s multi-platform audience was new to The Traitors franchise. Linear contributed the greatest share, expectedly since the series’ launch on broadcast was the big draw here.

The series is picking up traction on streaming, as well, likely among the audience that is already used to watching The Traitors U.S. version (which features a celebrity cast) on Peacock. Nielsen data shows that New Blood ranked as the No. 1 next-day broadcast season on streaming during the week of Sept. 21 based on minutes viewed.

On social media, New Blood is hitting its targets, too. The series has tallied 127 million video views through three weeks on air.

After slowly finding success with celebrity casts on the original U.S. iteration of The Traitors, NBC launched its new all-civilian version of the U.S.-based iteration last month. The UK format has historically featured a civilian cast. When NBCU brought the format to the U.S., the first season featured a mix of civilians and celebrities before transitioning strictly to celebrity casts for subsequent seasons. Funnily, the UK has taken some inspiration and last year commenced Celebrity Traitors UK.

Set at a castle deep in the Scottish Highlands, this nail-biting psychological adventure sees contestants work together on a series of exhilarating missions to build a prize fund worth up to $250,000. Hidden among the Faithful are the Traitors, who murder the Faithful one-by-one under the cover of darkness as the Faithful race to uncover them from the game. At the end of the game, if the remaining Faithful banish every Traitor, they share the prize fund; if even one Traitor survives to the end, the Traitors take it all.

The Traitors is produced by Studio Lambert. Alan Cumming hosts and serves as executive producer alongside Mike Cotton, Sam Rees-Jones, Rosie Franks, Jack Burgess, Stephen Lambert, Tim Harcourt and Doran Azouelos. The format was created and developed by IDTV in cooperation with RTL Creative Unit and is distributed by All3Media International, part of media and entertainment group, Banijay Entertainment.

New episodes of New Blood air Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET / PT and are available to stream the next day on Peacock.