If Gwyneth Paltrow’s recent trial involving a ski-hill collision was a TV show, it would be a ratings blockbuster.
According to a Variety report, the eight-day trial was viewed by nearly 30 million people, on a variety of platforms.
While Paltrow emerged victorious after retired optometrist Terry Sanderson sued her for $300 million over his claim that she collided with him on a Utah ski hill, the other big winner was the Law and Crime Network, which livestreamed the trial on its YouTube page; as Variety reported, approximately 16.5 million people watched the trial via that livestream, with an additional 7.4 million watching on the Law and Crime Network Facebook page, and another 4.2 million via TikTok.
“This trial performed incredibly well for us across all of our platforms,” said Rachel Stockman, president of the Law and Crime Network. “The interest continued to multiply each day we streamed it on our social live feeds, linear channel and for our video-on-demand.”
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As Stockman explained, the public appears to have huge interest in watching celebrities battle it out in court.
“After the Johnny Depp defamation case, there seems to be a particular fascination with celebrities in court and this pretty simple personal injury case is the perfect example,” Stockman added. “If there hadn’t been a celebrity involved, no one would have cared. To be honest, viewers would have found the details quite uneventful in this civil suit. For this trial, however, we saw just the opposite, with viewers hanging on to every nugget.”
Meanwhile, Variety noted that the total number of viewers who watched the trial is likely even greater, since the viewership via Law and Crime Network doesn’t factor in those who watched similar YouTube livestreams of the trial offered by The Associated Press and Court TV.
