'House Of The Dragon' Sets Record HBO New Series Debut: 10M Viewers

by Wayne Friedman , August 22, 2022

For its highly anticipated Sunday debut, HBO Max/HBO’s “House of the Dragon” -- a prequel of the big “Game of Thrones” series -- posted its biggest premiere ever for a new series -- nearly 10 million viewers, according to the company.

Warner Bros. Discovery -- owner of HBO Max/HBO -- did not break out viewing specifics for its streaming platform (HBO Max) or its linear TV network (HBO), or how it calculated overall viewing.

“Dragon” was HBO’s best result for any episode since May 2019. The final episode of “Game of Thrones” scored a series record of 19.3 million viewers, which included viewing on HBO cable channel, and HBO Go and HBO Now apps. Just looking at HBO, the “Thrones” finale posted 13.6 million viewers.

The “Thrones” first-season debut episode in 2011 earned 2.2 million Nielsen-measured same-day viewers.

In terms of the “Game of Thrones” series, HBO says the original “Game of Thrones” series finished its strongest week ever on HBO Max.

Citing historical HBO programming trends, Warner Bros. Discovery did say total viewing is predicted to increase. Typically, Sunday night viewership for a HBO series represents just 20% to 40% of the show’s total gross audience, according to the company.

New episodes of “House of the Dragon” will debut each week at 9:00 p.m. EST/PST on HBO and will be available to stream on HBO Max.

This season -- 10 episodes in total -- will have its finale on October 23.

“Dragon” also was the largest series launch for HBO Max in the U.S., Latin America and Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) territories,

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