(Bloomberg) -- Last month, Spanish fans of the hit TV series Yellowstone gathered to celebrate its imminent return at an elegant building along Madrid’s famed Gran Via.
Guests played virtual shooting and lasso games, got temporary tattoos featuring a fake cattle brand and took quizzes to see which character matched their personalities. Some posed for photos on a straw-covered porch reminiscent of the Montana ranch where the modern-day cowboy drama takes place.
Yellowstone has been the most-watched show internationally on the Paramount+ streaming service, which is offered in the UK, France and Germany among other countries. It’s also the most-popular show on SkyShowtime, a 2-year-old streaming venture between Paramount Global and Comcast Corp. that operates in smaller markets like Poland and Portugal.
“It’s a juggernaut for us,” SkyShowtime Chief Executive Officer Monty Sarhan said in an interview. “It’s driven our business.”
Yellowstone premiered on the Paramount Network cable channel in the US in 2018 and has been one of the most successful dramas on TV. The series follows the travails of the Dutton family, owners of a huge cattle ranch.
The second part of Yellowstone’s fifth season debuted in the US on Nov. 10, capturing 16.4 million viewers, the biggest audience for any of the show’s premieres, according to data provider VideoAmp. Not wanting to miss out on any potential viewers, Paramount aired the episode on everything from its CBS broadcast network to its Comedy Central cable channel.
Paramount doesn’t own the streaming rights in the US, however. Early on, the company licensed those to Comcast’s Peacock. “We hadn’t had a streaming service, so it made sense at the time,” Paramount co-CEO Chris McCarthy said in an interview.
The companies haven’t said when the newest episodes of Yellowstone will come to Peacock in the US. In Europe, they began streaming after the US premiere.
To promote past seasons overseas, SkyShowtime has hosted “cowboy camps” attended by journalists and the company’s distribution partners in Madrid, Amsterdam and Warsaw. Guests in cowboy hats, boots and denim learned to ride horses and use a lasso before enjoying a barbecue.
“In many of our markets, especially in Eastern Europe, there is still a love and affinity for American entertainment, as well as the notion of what America stands for, and that’s freedom, prosperity, things that are larger than life, capitalism, and that’s on full display in Yellowstone,” Sarhan said.
Paramount doesn’t break out its streaming subscribers by region, but the company added 3.5 million customers in third quarter, bringing its total globally to 72 million.
Missing from the new episodes of Yellowstone is series star Kevin Costner, who played the family patriarch John Dutton and decided to leave. But McCarthy said the vision of Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan will keep audiences engaged, even without the show’s original leading man.
“He’s always able to find a new way to change the story, to elevate the stakes, to really pull people in in a fresh and compelling way,” McCarthy said.
Sheridan has already created spinoffs, including the limited series 1883, which followed an earlier generation of the Dutton family and depicts how they came to own the land for their ranch. Another prequel 1923 — starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren — also joined the “Taylorverse,” a constellation of programs that Sheridan has produced and written.
All three ranked in the top 10 for Paramount+ for attracting and retaining new subscribers last year, with Yellowstone in the No. 1 spot, according to the company. For SkyShowtime, four of the five most-watched shows are from Sheridan.
And there’s more. Landman, a West Texas oil drama featuring Billy Bob Thornton and Jon Hamm, debuts next week. The Madison, another Yellowstone spinoff featuring Michelle Pfeiffer, is due next year.
“We’re just at the beginning of what this series and frankly, our service is going to provide,” McCarthy said.
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