‘House Of The Dragon’ Pulls In 2.6 Million U.S. Households, Highest Same-Day Viewership Of 2022 In Samba TV Metrics

Anthony D'Alessandro
·3 min read
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Natch, HBO and HBO Max had a hit on their hands with the premiere of House of the Dragon, which in Samba TV-measured U.S. households delivered 2.6 million viewers. That’s the best of any premium cable or streaming premiere year-to-date per Samba.

Note these are the first numbers were seeing for the George R.R. Martin Game of Thrones spinoff, and the figures HBO are releasing later Monday are bound to be higher. Samba TV doesn’t measure mobile, however, their sample includes a panel of 3 million terrestrial TVs, weighted to the U.S. Census. By contrast, Samba TV’s panel is nearly 100x larger than Nielsen’s household footprint of 45K homes. Samba clocked House of the Dragon viewing during its initial six hours, between 9-p.m.-3 a.m. ET on both traditional linear HBO and HBO Max.

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In January, HBO said that the Season 2 premiere of Euphoria starring Emmy winner Zendaya pulled in 2.4 million viewers across all its platforms in its Sunday night debut, saying it was the strongest digital premiere performance of any HBO episode on HBO Max since the streaming service’s launch last May.

Note that same-day figure beats the HBO Max weekend coverage of some of the day-and-date theatrical movies during WarnerMedia’s experiment last year, i.e., Wonder Woman 1984 (2.2M in its first weekend), Dune (1.9M), Conjuring 3 (1.6M) and Many Saints of Newark (1M). But those figures excluded HBO linear as those pics only hit HBO Max.

Samba TV also says that House of the Dragon exceeded initial same-day viewership of Netflix’s tentpole series Stranger Things (1.2 million U.S. household viewers streaming in its first day), more than doubling same-day viewership for its Season 4 premiere earlier this summer.

Higher-income households over-indexed watching episode one of House of the Dragon, with the $125K-$150K group over-indexing by the highest margin (+23%) followed by the $200K+ group (+21%). Gen-Z (Adults 20-24) and millennials (Adults 25-34) both over-indexed in viewership by 4% and 1%, respectively.

‘House Of The Dragon’ Season 1 Photo Gallery

“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. “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.”

As Deadline previously mentioned, HOTD was the biggest marketing campaign ever for HBO at more than $100 million in media value. 

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