This just in: people enjoy Game of Thrones. Pass it on.
But seriously, we have ratings news. A lot of people watched last night’s Game of Thrones premiere. Like, a lot, a lot. According to TV by the Numbers, 10.1 million people tuned in to watch “Dragonstone” live last night. Before that, the most live viewers a Game of Thrones episode had was 8.89 million for “The Winds of Winter,” the season 6 finale. “Dragonstone” blew right past and broke through the 10 million barrier without breaking a sweat.
And it keeps getting better. Entertainment Weekly reports that “Dragonstone” brought in 16.1 million viewers across all platforms, including repeats and streaming on DVR. Overall, it’s smashing the numbers set by “The Red Women,” the season 6 premiere, and is probably making HBO really wish there was going to be a season 9. Hell, Cinema Blend even reported that pornography viewing in the US dropped by 4% when the premiere was on, and if an episode of television can tear people away from porn, it can pretty much do anything.
And this is all the more impressive when you consider that, as EW points out, television viewership is traditionally lower in the summer as opposed to the spring, when the show usually debuts. Beyond that, “Dragonstone” inspired 2.4 million tweets last night, making it the most tweeted-about Game of Thrones episode ever.
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So what does all this mean? It means that Game of Thrones is really, really, really popular. But don’t tell anyone. Let’s keep it our little secret.