Game of Thrones mid-season game of numbers
Here we are, five episodes into season four. The month went by quickly, and those more-than-positive viewership numbers we kept getting each week sure did help. Not only was the plot of the show exciting to follow, but its success as well. Since I am a sucker for visual representations, I plotted the numbers from week to week; here are the long-awaited results (simply click to enlarge):
All viewer numbers refer to the first airing only, and the graphs of longer or shorter seasons have been scaled to correspond to the 10-episode run of Game of Thrones.
How does this compare to the previous chart? Well, first of all, not one but two additional lines had to be added to the Y-axis in order to accommodate the growth. Crazy. Not only was the speculated 6 million mark reached and exceeded, so was the 7 million one, just this week. Ah, the holy number. The series high thus currently stands at 7.16 million viewers in the first hour of airing.
An even more impressive number has also been revealed this week. An average of 17.8 million viewers has so far seen each episode of the current season across all platforms (the previous high, reached last season, stands at 14.4m), which is a number that can only grow with new episodes coming and the overall upwards trend. As our founder puts it:
17.8 million viewers per ep blows away #TheSopranos 14.4m per ep and officially makes #GameofThrones the most watched @HBO show EVER.
— Phil Bicking (@p_Red) May 6, 2014
Yes indeed. Episodes of The Sopranos had fewer options for delayed viewing available back in the day, but reached higher numbers for the initial airing as a consequence. In sum, the total audience of Game of Thrones is the largest of any HBO show ever. The brass can now confidently let D&D tell the story in its entirety, with some additional funding if needed.
Before the season started, we speculated about reaching the 6 million milestone. Now that the show has broken the 7 million mark, the next big goal obviously lies at 8. When will that happen? Speculate away. I can imagine the numbers stagnating or even dipping a little bit in the next weeks only to rise again for the last two episodes of the season and break new records. Knowing what is yet to come on the show, I would not find such a development too surprising.
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