World hunger for Games
Premiere sets ratings record
GAME of Thrones has smashed viewing records both in Australia and overseas.
The first episode of the epic series’ eighth and final season blitzed ratings for Foxtel, with more than one million people in Australia tuning in last week.
Preliminary findings reveal the first episode reached an overnight linear audience across all airings of 962,000 viewers, an increase of 17 per cent on the season seven premiere in 2017.
Foxtel anticipates those numbers to grow significantly once the consolidated data becomes available.
The first episode also delivered an additional total premiere day audience of 333,000, who streamed it live or On Demand across Foxtel Now and Foxtel GO – the biggest daily VPM audience for 2019.
Foxtel is the only TV broadcaster that owns the rights to screen the fantasy drama in Australia.
“The Wall may have fallen but (Monday night’s) ratings have rocketed Game of Thrones higher than ever as Australia joined the rest of the world in watching this global television event in numbers never before seen on Foxtel,” said Brian Walsh, Foxtel’s Executive Director of Television.
“(Monday’s) viewership is a testament to the hunger that fans have had over the past two years for the return of the unrivalled action, drama and intrigue that only Game of Thrones can deliver and we are thrilled with the result.
“Frankly, there is no other show like it. It is the television series of a generation.”
Mr Walsh added On Demand streaming of all past seven seasons of Game of Thrones was higher than ever as fans binged in anticipation of the season premiere.
Last season’s debut drew in 820,000 viewers, which was the highest ratings ever for a series in the history of subscription television in Australia and an increase of 13 per cent on season six’s launch in 2016.
In the US, more than 17.4 million viewers tuned in to watch the epic fantasy show on HBO.
That makes the season eight premiere the most watched show in HBO’s history and the most watched scripted entertainment show on US TV this year. It surpasses the show’s previous overnight record of 16.9 million viewers for the season seven finale two years ago.
But the figures combined would not even come close to how many people were tuning in, given all the various methods of distribution, and not even HBO can calculate exactly how many people are watching globally.
While some reports have guessed that more than a billion people might watch the episode worldwide, Entertainment Weekly puts that worldwide figure closer to 100 million.
It was also the most tweeted about episode of GoT ever, with more than five million tweets.
Bran Stark was the highest trending character, largely due to his cliffhanger face-off with Jaime Lannister.
Bran was closely followed by Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen, Sansa Stark and Cersei Lannister among the most popular trends.
It’s taken 67 episodes and 4000 pages of George R.R. Martin’s iconic books, but at long last the end is finally here, meaning there’s only five episodes to watch until winter has come and gone forever.
Game of Thrones airs every Monday express from the US on Fox Showcase at 11am and again at 8.30pm.
News Corp Australia, the publisher of this paper, is a part owner of Foxtel.