History was made at HBO with the debut of House of the Dragon. The Game of Thrones prequel drew 9.986 million viewers across linear and HBO Max platforms in the U.S. Sunday, the largest audience for any new original series in the history of pay cabler.The premiere also marked the largest series launch on HBO Max across the U.S., Latin America, and EMEA (Europe, the Middle East, and Africa), driving what HBO calls an unprecedented level of concurrent streams on the platform. Typically, Sunday night viewership for a HBO series will represent just 20%-40% of the show’s total gross audience, according to the network.The debut also topped Game Of Thrones‘ 2011 premiere by almost 350% in terms of viewers. Of course, there was no HBO Max back then and streaming was a minor part of the TV industry. Another bit of trivia: Game of Thrones‘ 82-minute series finale in 2019 burned all HBO records with 19.3 million sets of eyeballs across linear viewing which included the now-extinct HBO Go and HBO Now.The House of the Dragon premiere was also a hit on social media, where fans showed up to celebrate the return to Westeros. On premiere day, House of the Dragon was the longest trending topic on Twitter, ranking No. 1 for 14 hours straight, and trended No. 1 on Google Trends.“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 Casey Bloys, Chief Content Officer, HBO & HBO Max. “We look forward to sharing with audiences what else George, Ryan, and Miguel have in store for them this season.”Additionally, the original Game of Thrones series just wrapped its strongest week on HBO Max to date, capping off a seven-week stretch of week-over-week growth in engagement leading up to the premiere of House of the Dragon. The weekly average for Game of Thrones in August is nearly 90% above June and nearly 50% above July.Earlier Monday, it was revealed that House of the Dragon lured 2.6 million viewers in Samba TV-measured U.S. households delivered 2.6 million viewers. That’s the best of any premium cable or streaming premiere year-to-date per Samba. Samba TV’s sample includes a panel of 3 million terrestrial TVs, weighted to the U.S. Census. Its panel is nearly 100x larger than Nielsen’s household footprint of 45,000 homes.House of the Dragon is from co-creator/executive producers George R.R. Martin; co-creator/co-showrunner/EP Ryan Condal; co-showrunner/EP/director, Miguel Sapochnik; and EPs Sara Hess, Jocelyn Diaz, Vince Gerardis, Ron Schmidt. It’s based on Martin’s Fire & Blood.
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