Major comedy sequels rarely live up to the hype, but “Happy Gilmore 2” immediately struck a nerve across the golf world. But the movie’s impact isn’t limited to fans of the sport it parodies; its reach is widespread. That’s evidenced by a huge streaming record it set last month.
The Nielsen Company released the big streaming news earlier this week. And while the enormous viewership numbers are good news for Adam Sandler and co., they may pale in comparison to viewership of the Masters.
Here’s what you need to know.
‘Happy Gilmore 2’ most-streamed movie ever
Adam Sandler’s long-awaited follow-up to his iconic 1996 “Happy Gilmore” movie was almost immediately beloved. Its reach was aided by numerous cameos throughout the film, and not just from golf stars, but celebrities and athletes from outside the sport (including Taylor Swift’s boyfriend Travis Kelce).
Thanks to Nielsen, we have some numbers to measure just how big that reach was.
You may not realize that Nielsen releases estimated streaming viewership numbers as they’ve done for TV for decades. But this week’s announcement from the company was a shocker.
According to Nielsen, from July 21-27, “Happy Gilmore 2” racked up more streaming viewership than any movie ever has in a single week. The data point Nielsen uses to compare streaming content is “Minutes Viewed.”
So just how many minutes did people spend watching “Happy Gilmore 2” in the first few days after its release on July 25? An incredible 2.893 billion minutes viewed.
Now while it may seem like everybody has seen “Happy Gilmore 2,” that’s not literally true. But 2.893 billion minutes viewed is the equivalent of every human on Earth watching the movie for just under 30 seconds.
Nielsen also revealed that the previous title holder was the Netflix movie “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” which earned 2.886 billion minutes.
How ‘Happy Gilmore 2’ compares to Masters viewership
So how does the popularity of “Happy Gilmore 2” compare to the biggest tournament in golf, the Masters? Fortunately, we recently did an unscientific investigation into Masters viewership numbers after Bryson DeChambeau made a bold claim about YouTube golf’s popularity.
Earlier this month on the “Pat McAfee Show,” DeChambeau shared his theory that YouTube golf may already be more popular than pro golf in terms of viewership. He used the Masters as an example.
“If you think about the amount of viewership at the Masters compared to YouTube videos all tied in together… those amount of views on YouTube are more than what normal broadcasts get,” DeChambeau argued at the time.
CBS’s Sunday broadcast of the 2025 Masters averaged 12.7 million viewers over its five-hour (or 300-minute) span. Our rough math found that equates to about 3.8 billion minutes viewed.
In other words, in just five hours, this year’s Masters Sunday broadcast drew nearly a billion more minutes viewed than “Happy Gilmore 2” did in its first weekend.
As for YouTube golf, we estimated that DeChambeau’s most popular YouTube video, “Breaking 50 with Donald Trump,” has earned roughly 896 million minutes viewed in over a year, far less than “Happy Gilmore 2” scored in one weekend.
