A leak isn’t enough to stop Game of Thrones from breaking new ratings records with its final season.
The show has been off the air for nearly two years, and now there’s definitive proof that fans have definitely been missing it. That proof comes from the first ratings data released by HBO in the US.
The premium channel boasts that 17.4 million people watched season 8, episode 1 on Sunday night (April 14), when TV viewing figures were combined with its HBO GO and HBO NOW streaming apps.
That’s up “significantly” — as HBO puts it — from Game of Thrones’ all-time record-breaking audience of 16.5 million viewers watching the season 7 finale in 2017. It’s also a huge increase over the 10.1 million who saw last season’s premiere on the night.
HBO boasted: “As a testament to the evolving video consumption habits of subscribers, the HBO NOW streaming service saw a jump of approximately 50% in viewing when compared to last season’s finale and nearly doubled (97%) when compared to the seventh season premiere. Yesterday accounts for largest night of streaming activity ever for HBO.”
It’s not like the show needs any more praise lavished on it, but the ratings record is even more impressive since premiere episode ‘Winterfell’ leaked hours before its scheduled transmission.
DirecTV Now had to publicly apologise to HBO on Sunday (April 14) for accidentally uploading the episode four hours before it was supposed to be screened. Yikes…
A day later, we can’t imagine anyone at HBO is still too upset about the leak now that they have an all-time ratings record to brag about.
