House of the Dragon and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are the big new fantasy shows on the block. Both have been hits, but until now, we’ve never had an impartial third party giving us data on exactly how well they’re both doing. We have impartial numbers for House of the Dragon — they’re excellent and only getting better — but now, Nielsen has released its list of streaming ratings for the week of August 29-September 4, meaning we can see how well the shows fared against each other.
Take a look at the top 10 most watched streaming shows for the week of Aug. 29-Sep. 4 below:
- The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Amazon Prime Video): 1,253 million minutes watched
- Me Time (Netflix): 927 million minutes watched
- NCIS (Netflix): 812 million minutes
- Game of Thrones (HBO Max): 792 million minutes
- House of the Dragon (HBO Max): 781 million minutes
- Devil in Ohio (Netflix): 716 million minutes
- Cocomelon (Netflix): 693 million minutes
- Grey’s Anatomy (Netflix): 674 million minutes
- Stranger Things (Netflix): 667 million minutes
- Echoes (Netflix): 627 million minutes
So the short version is that The Rings of Power was watched more than House of the Dragon. Hooray for hobbits!
The Rings of Power premiere scores better streaming ratings than House of the Dragon
That said, there are some caveats to note here. The biggest is that this chart only measures minutes spent streaming a program. While The Rings of Power is a streaming-only show, House of the Dragon is available to either stream on HBO Max or watch linearly on HBO. Millions of people are watching the show on ordinary TV, and this chart does not reflect the minutes they spent there.
Also of note is that The Rings of Power released two episodes at once on September 1, so people were gobbling them down. But that’s still impressive, particularly since those episodes were only available for a few days of the time period this chart measures.
It’ll be very interesting to see how things look when both shows have wrapped up!
To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.
Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels