The fifth season premiere of HBO’s “Game of Thrones” broke huge ratings records for the show despite the fact that the leak of the season’s first four episodes on piracy networks have scared the GoT Producers. And I tell you this! Never succumb to any piracy or spoiler that will disrupt the course of your favorite show, that kills the curiousness and excitement in you, try to take things a bit more slower than usual and rest assured you’ll enjoy it!
Well, enough of the piracy talk! The big-budget HBO fantasy drama opened to just under eight million viewers in Live+Same Day ratings on Sunday night – up 1.4 million from its fourth season premiere and up by 800,000 from its previously most-watched episode to date. HBO, like many networks, has opted out of reporting or confirming same-day ratings any more due to the general audience trend towards DVR and On Demand TV usage. When DVR, HBO Go, On Demand and encore figures were factored in, the average episode of ‘Thrones’ last season scored around 19.1 million gross weekly viewers .
That number is expected to go even higher with the fifth season stats which will also factor in usage of the freshly launched HBO Now service.
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