The final season premiere of Game of Thrones stormed out HBO and the media as the series obtained a massive number of viewers on April 14. With about 17.4 million viewers across all HBO platforms, including the network's streaming services, HBO GO and HBO Now, the first episode of Game of Thrones Season 8 is now the biggest telecast in HBO's history as per Entertainment Weekly. Also, it is now the most watched series of the year beating CBS' The Big Bang Theory with its 14.1 million viewers earlier this year.
Aside from these titles, Game of Thrones Season 8 has also beaten its own viewership ratings. As it happens, the first episode has now the highest number of viewers in the course of the series. Two years ago when Game of Thrones Season 7 premiered, it only got 16.1 million viewers in totality. And as the installment ends, it garnered a total of 16.9 million viewers when the season finale aired.
These Season 7 figures are not exactly what they expected. And the network believed that the contract disputes with its Dish subscribers brought a huge impact on the numbers. But even so, Game of Thrones Season 8 is showing a dramatic increase in its viewership numbers.
The 17.4 million viewers accounted by HBO only pertains to the premiere night. So, it is very much expected for this figure to rise up once the delayed viewing is already accounted for as well.
On another note, Game of Thrones Season 8 did not only rock the television sets of its viewers. In fact, the premiere of the final season also shooked the Twitter world as over 5 million tweets are made during the premiere. It is seen that the major aspect of the show that was being tweeted is about Sam's revelation of Jon Snow's identity to Jon Snow, himself. And so far, Winterfell has now become the most tweeted episode of Game of Thrones.
It is worth mentioning that these figures do not, of course, include the number of illegal viewership. But based on the data from MUSO, over 55 million pirated views were made within 24 hours after Game of Thrones Season 8 dropped on HBO as revealed by The Verge.
And if sorted based on countries, India and China are the top two countries where the pirated views came from. But what came as a surprise to everyone is when the United States came to third place to house the most pirated views of the show.
With all these things at hand, it is certain that the numbers will continue to rise. Whether it may be on the official number of viewers or the pirated views, Game of Thrones surely would not leave the scene without leaving a great mark.
