The too good to be true viewing numbers for the Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon continue with the news that the show is now also breaking records in the U.K.
People using Comcast’s Sky TV service turned out in droves to watch the premiere, according to The Hollywood Reporter. About 1.39 million people watched the show. That number breaks down this way: 394,000 watched it at 9 p.m. local time when it aired. Around 1 million waited until 2 a.m. to watch (when it landed on the platform) or they watched later that day.
Those numbers mean that House of the Dragon is the biggest drama launch ever on the Sky Atlantic channel, beating out its predecessor show. There’s more accounting to be done and those numbers will inflate significantly once all the figures come in.
Sky’s managing director of content, Zai Bennett, said the company was exceedingly excited about the numbers.
“Viewing over the last 24 hours for House of the Dragon across Sky and NOW has been as epic as the show itself. The response has already been phenomenal — and we’re confident the figures will grow significantly once all on demand figures consolidate and we have the total picture of viewing.”
The viewership in the UK echoes numbers in the United States, where the show’s premiere became HBO’s most watched ever, pulling in 9.99 million viewers. It pulled in so many viewers that HBO Max crashed several times and many were unable to watch.
The show is based on a book by original show writer George R.R. Martin called Fire & Blood, which came out in 2018. Critics and fans alike have praised the show – based 200 years before the events of the original.
Episode one of the show is currently streaming on HBO Max. New episodes will drop weekly through October.
