The Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon is already a bonafide hit. According to new data released by Samba, the first episode of House of the Dragon was viewed by 2.6 million viewers on Samba TV devices. This metric, which was measured among Samba’s 3 million smart TV homes in the first six hours of the episode’s debut, easily makes the episode the biggest premium cable or streaming premiere year-to-date on the service. By comparison, Stranger Things‘ Season 4 premiere earned 1.2 million US household viewers in its first day.
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“HBO has once again tapped into the magic of Game of Thrones with its spinoff series, House of the Dragon,” Samba TV co-founder and CEO Ashwin Navin said in a statement. “Diehard GoT fans have been eagerly anticipating more from the franchise and they turned out in force for House of the Dragon, with the HBO program generating the biggest single day premium cable or streaming viewership premiere in 2022. More than doubling initial same-day viewership of Netflix’s Season 4 premiere of Stranger Things, the Game of Thrones prequel recaptured the fire of HBO’s original masterpiece in a big way. The next challenge, and the real opportunity for HBO in the coming weeks, is to expand viewership beyond the passionate built-in fan base. Just as Stranger Things‘ most recent Season 4, Volume Two drop surpassed its Volume One audience, HBO must look to innovative marketing that drives incremental audience growth to break through today’s saturated content marketplace.”
House of the Dragon finds the Targaryen dynasty at the absolute apex of its power, with more than 15 dragons under their yoke. Most empires-real and imagined-crumble from such heights. In the case of the Targaryens, their slow fall begins almost 193 years before the events of Game of Thrones, when King Viserys Targaryen breaks with a century of tradition by naming his daughter Rhaenyra heir to the Iron Throne. But when Viserys later fathers a son, the court is shocked when Rhaenyra retains her status as his heir, and seeds of division sow friction across the realm.” Paddy Considine, Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Emma D’Arcy, Steve Toussaint, Eve Best, Fabien Frankel, Sonoya Mizuno, and Rhys Ifans star in the series.
“As soon as George pitched this to me, all the gears clicked into place,” showrunner Ryan J. Condal explained in a recent interview. “Telling the story of the Targaryens at the height of their power made tons of sense coming off the original show because we get to know Daenerys very well, we get to know the myth and legend of her family but we don’t know much about the Targaryens as they actually existed,” Condal said. “It’s an intimate story; it’s a bit of a Greek tragedy about the house divided, a house that tears itself apart over a succession. Very Game of Thrones but very different from the original.”
What did you think of the series premiere of the Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon? How do you feel about these Samba numbers? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
New episodes of House of the Dragon debut Sundays exclusively on HBO.
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