Amazon's 'The Rings of Power' Pulled A Larger Audience For Its Premiere Episode Than HBO's 'House Of The Dragon'
Image Source: JoBlo
The big gamble that is Amazon Prime Video’s The Rings of Power seems to have paid off, in viewership at least. According to Nielsen’s SVOD data, The Rings of Power racked up an astounding 1.25 billion minutes streamed in its first weekend, surpassing HBO’s The House of the Dragon, which came in at 781 million minutes.
Though this is not the largest record, which belongs to Reacher at 1.84 billion minutes, the difference comes with a caveat that lends a little more weight to The Rings of Power’s achievement. When Reacher debuted, it followed the Netflix model of releasing all its eight episodes. That provided viewers significantly more runtime to rack up that 1.84 billion minute total.
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The Rings of Power achieved its total with just two episodes available for streaming. It comes out to something more than twice the average viewers of Reacher. In the same fantasy genre, Amazon Prime Video’s The Wheel of Time, which debuted with three episodes, garnered 1.16 billion minutes in its first weekend. It is also worth noting that the House of the Dragon minute totals does not include its totals from HBO’s standard television broadcast, which according to The Hollywood Reporter, is a significant portion of HBO’s viewership.
Regardless of the caveats, it is a testament to the incredible revival in popularity that the science-fiction and fantasy genres are enjoying, especially since the massive growth in streaming services.
The next episode of The Rings of Power airs Friday on Amazon Prime Video.
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Source(s): The Hollywood Reporter