According to Variety, nearly 30 million people across YouTube and other social media platforms watched Gwyneth Paltrow’s ski trial.
Paltrow was in court over allegations that she crashed inro Terry Sanderson, retired optometrist, on a ski slope, broke his ribs, and caused irreversible brain damage. Paltrow’s counterclaim was that Sanderson instead crashed into her. Ultimately, Paltrow won her trial, receiving one dollar for damages.
The trial lasted eight days and was a big buzz on the internet, filled with many viral moments.
The Law and Crime Network hosted a livestream of the trial on their YouTube channel. Roughly 16.5 million tuned in to the livestream according to the network, with 7.4 million viewing it on Facebook, and another 4.2 million on TikTok. These numbers do not include similar airings on Court TV and the Associated Press. (Via Variety)
“This trial performed incredibly well for us across all of our platforms. The interest continued to multiply each day we streamed it on our social live feeds, linear channel and for our video-on-demand,” said president of the Law and Crime Network, Rachel Stockman.
“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. 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.”