As a Sunday night series, the first episode of “House of the Dragon” was only available for streaming during the final three hours of Nielsen’s window for calculating its weekly SVOD ratings for Aug. 15-21. But in that brief period of time, the “Game of Thrones” prequel managed to be watched for 327 million minutes via HBO Max, according to the ratings currency company’s new rankings.
“House of the Dragon” premiered Sunday, Aug. 21 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and was immediately available for streaming on HBO Max at that time. The above Nielsen-provided figure only counts streaming viewership, meaning any viewership from someone who watched Episode 1 of “House of the Dragon” via HBO’s linear channel before midnight E.T., or any other platform, is not included in the count.
Per Nielsen’s streaming report for the week of Aug. 15-21, which was released Thursday, “As you might notice, the premiere episode of House of the Dragon on HBO Max did not make the Top 10 lists this week. Nielsen measurement is based on a “Monday through Sunday” week, which means the HBO release schedule for House Of The Dragon only provides a 3-hour window (Eastern Time) to accumulate viewing minutes during this initial week. As an addendum to this week’s list, we wanted to share that Episode 1 of House Of The Dragon received 327 million viewing minutes. We expect it to settle in as a regular over the coming weeks.”
According to HBO’s own tally, which counts viewers rather than minutes, the “House of the Dragon” series premiere was viewed by nearly 10 million people across its debut night. Unlike Nielsen’s streaming ratings, that stat counts all available platforms.
HBO revealed this week that Episode 1 has now crossed the 30 million-viewers mark, and previously announced that initial viewership for Episode 2 rose by 2% compared with the premiere.
Source by variety.com