House of the Dragon: the spin-off show is HBO’s biggest ever premiere, here’s how the numbers stack up
We all knew that House of the Dragon was going to be a massive hit. Not only had the anticipation about the new show reached a fever pitch over the last few months, but the popularity of the original Game of Thrones series (whose finale brought in a record 19.3 million viewers) showed that the new series was very likely to enjoy a good run.
And so far, these predictions have been confirmed, because a massive 9.99 million people tuned in to watch the season premiere in the early hours of Monday morning - a record-breaking figure for a HBO original series premiere.
And, according to HBO, this number will represent 20 to 40 per cent of the final figure, with people watching on demand, on DVD, and repeat watching the episode.
In an unbelievable Tik Tok, which seems to prove the premiere’s popularity, a building in New York shows about seven apartments – at least – all watching the episode.
“It was wonderful to see millions of Game of Thrones fans return with us to Westeros last night. House of the Dragon features an incredibly talented cast and crew who poured their heart and soul into the production, and we’re ecstatic with viewers’ positive response,” said HBO and HBO Max’s Chief Content Officer, Casey Bloys.
There were so many viewers that some users experienced streaming issues, particularly around 8:40 p.m and 9:20 p.m - there were apparently around 3000 outages over that period.
HBO’s communications head Chris Willard said: “House of the Dragon is being successfully viewed by millions of HBO Max subscribers this evening. We’re aware of a small portion of users attempting to connect via Fire TV devices that are having issues and are in the process of resolving for those impacted users.”
On HBO Max, Game of Thrones had also had a strong week. In the run-up to the House of the Dragon release, audiences had been rewatching the original series, with a seven-week stretch of week-over-week engagement culminating on its strongest week on the streamer yet. According to Warner Media, Games of Thrones viewership in August was 90 per cent higher than that for the series in June.
So next to the House of the Dragon’s extraordinary numbers, how do HBO’s other hit series compare? Here are the top shows and their US premiere day numbers.
(To note, Nielsen, one of the main companies which track HBO’s audiences, changed the way it tracked HBO’s viewerships back in 2004, making absolutely concrete comparisons between the different shows impossible.)
Band Of Brothers (2001)
It’s an extraordinary figure, but back in 2001 the HBO series about a group of paratroopers in World War Two, pulled in a whopping 9.9 million viewers. The show starred Damian Lewis, David Schwimmer, Ron Livingston, and Tom Hardy, was nominated for twenty Primetime Emmy Awards and won seven.
Fascinatingly, the third episode was reported to have lost as many as 20 per cent of its viewers which seemed to be because of the 9/11 terrorist attacks - it was released just five days later.
Six Feet Under (2001)
The first episode of this series about a family in Los Angeles who run a funeral home pulled in a whopping 4.97 million viewers. And this wasn’t the show’s best figure either – series 2 pulled in 6.24 million viewers.
The Wire (2002)
The Wire has gained cult status and is deemed to be one of the best TV series of all time. But how did it start? Well, pretty strong. Its first episode, released in June 2002, received as many as 3.7 million views and its second series started on 4.43 million. It wasn’t able to sustain these numbers for the duration of the show, but it hardly matters.
The Wire went on to become of the most important shows of all time: it was groundbreaking for its choice of actors, including complete novices, as well as for its subject matter, focusing on different institutions in Baltimore. It was nominated for 60 awards and won 16, including several American Film Institute Awards.
The Sopranos (1999)
Another legendary series from HBO, The Sopranos is also often regarded as one of the top TV shows ever. When the show about New-Jersey-based mobster Tony Soprano was first released in 1999, its first episode pulled in a whopping 3.45 million views and ended the first season with an audience of 5.22 million. 7.64 million people watched the first episode of season 2, 11.26 million people watched episode 1 of season 3, and 13.43 million people watched episode 1 of season 4.
After that, viewing figures started to drop off a little, but only by a bit, with 10 million and then eight million people on average tuning in for the final two seasons. Not so shabby at all.
True Detective (2014)
The anthology crime drama starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson also did incredibly well when it was released. Season 1 had No Time To Die director Cary Joji Fukunaga behind the camera, and its first episode garnered as many as 2.33 million viewers when it was released in January 2014.
Season 2 episode 1 pulled in even more with an audience of 3.17 million, but by season 3 numbers had started to drop off.
Game Of Thrones (2011)
It may be surprising that one of HBO’s biggest shows ever began with moderate viewing numbers, but, admittedly, it is an odd premise. Dragons, Kings and Queens and zombies, anyone? Even though George R. R. Martin’s book was a massive hit, it still makes sense that the show’s viewer figures grew over the years.
When the show premiered in 2011, it pulled in 2.22 million viewers. By its final episode in 2019, it had jumped to a whopping 19.3 million viewers – with 13.6 million watching live on HBO on the night.
Westworld (2016)
Dystopian science fiction show Westworld garnered 1.96 million viewers on its first episode and was a major hit for a while. As with True Detective, things started to drop off in season 3. Its premiere had 901,000 viewers - the lowers number in the show’s history and a 57 per cent drop compared to season 2’s premiere figure of 2.1 million viewers.
Veep (2012)
Armando Iannucci’s political satire show Veep, which starred Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Anna Chlumsky and Tony Hale, launched with a viewership of 1.37 million - a pretty strong number, but the highest same day figure of the entire first series. However, according to Vulture, the show about the fictional Vice President of the United States “averaged between 4 million and 5 million cumulative viewers per episode” for its last series which ran in 2019.
Chernobyl (2019)
Launching with an audience of 1.2 million, and eventually pulling in cumulative viewership of more than 6 million viewers, this 2019 series made waves for the original way in which it reimagined the devastating nuclear disaster which took place in Ukraine in 1986.
Big Little Lies (2017)
The first season of Big Little Lies, which received 16 Primetime Emmy Award nominations and won eight, started with a viewership of 1.13 million. The second season opened with slightly more, with 1.42 million, and culminated in the season’s finale at 1.98 million. Starring Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern, and Zoë Kravitz, the show detailed the lives of five women in California who are involved in a murder investigation.
Euphoria (2019)
It’s shocking to think that the high-school drama show Euphoria started off with just over half a million viewers on the night. Now one of the most popular shows on TV, the A24 series that follows the lives of a number of teenagers navigating life at high school, quickly garnered millions of fans.
According to WarnerMedia, season 2 of the show pulled in as many as 2.4 million viewers across HBO and HBO Max, which was more than double the first series, and the season 2 finale it drew in 6.6 million viewers across the streaming platforms, too. According to HBO via Variety, season 2 was pulling in as many as 16.3 million total viewers per episode. Its only HBO rival is Game of Thrones, which had a whopping audience of 46 million in total across its eighth season.
