As the official recap show of RuPaul's Drag Race, The Pit Stop is a must-watch series season after season. Our goal for Season 16 was to build on the continued success of the series by aiming for record numbers in key metrics but by also encouraging engagement from the fandom at large. We aimed to make The Pit Stop appointment viewing on the RuPaul's Drag Race YouTube channel each week through social promotion and stunt casting.
For Season 16, we welcomed back fan-favorite host Trixie Mattel. Each week, Trixie was joined by a former queen or superfan to recap the episode. We collaborated with Trixie to reach her massive online audience, providing her with clips and tagging her in posts across platforms. We also stunt-casted each episode, inviting fan-favorite queens such as Maddy Morphosis and superfans like Brittany Broski to pull up to The Pit Stop!
The Pit Stop has seen major growth over the past few seasons, so we decided to launch breakout TikTok and Instagram handles to continue to bolster fan awareness and engagement for the series. We have reached over 300K+ followers on TikTok and 164K on Instagram.
On Fridays, we announced the guest for the week across social media. This garnered anticipation and conversation among fans and alumni queens alike. Episodes premiered each Saturday at 12pm ET on YouTube, promoting a learned fan behavior to look out for the drop. Following episode drops, we promoted with top clips and funny moments across The Pit Stop and RuPaul's Drag Race social pages.
Across 17 episodes, The Pit Stop for Season 16 garnered over 20M views on YouTube alone. Several posts went viral on TikTok and Instagram, including a moment with Maddy Morphosis which reached 16M views across Instagram and TikTok.
We saw great success using short-form clips to drive to the full episode, with season over season gains and a highly-engaged fandom.
