We’re a few days out from House Of The Dragon’s Season 2 finale, and the numbers are in. The episode “The Queen Who Ever Was” became the highest-rated HBO (and Max) premiere this year, with 8.9 million total viewers across TV and streaming platforms. That’s not a shabby number at all, but many outlets are noting it's down from the Season 1 ender, which debuted to 9 million+ viewers in 2022. It’s a minor downtick, for sure, but I’d argue the Season 1 ender didn’t face the headwinds Season 2 has faced. In fact, there’s one big reason even I, a huge House of the Dragon fan, haven’t caught the conclusion yet.
So, here’s the deal. We’re a big House of the Dragon household. Like to the point where we typically start an episode within 5-10 minutes of it hitting Max the night of. The first six episodes of the season my husband and I watched faithfully on Sundays, but last week was a struggle and we didn’t get to the episode until mid-week. Then, when the finale hit this past Sunday we didn’t watch at all. In fact, at the time of this writing, I’m still one episode behind.
What changed? The Olympics, of course. I’ve been watching live Olympics events daily, nightly, whenever I can get a chance to throw an event on, that’s been the TV of my choice. It’s not even that I think the Olympics are better than HOTD, it’s just that in the scale of appointment TV, sporting events are tops.
For example, if pommel horse guy wins a medal, that’s going to be everywhere in the morning. If Simon Biles and a bunch of gymnasts fall off a balance beam, it’s hard to avoid that information on the Internet. I work on the Internet for a living. I can’t avoid it, but the nice thing about most House of the Dragon headlines is that they won’t spoil me to the point where I already know exactly what’s going to happen. So while I think watching the series with my Max subscription is also appointment TV, I’ve taken my foot off the gas the last couple of weekends and prioritized other content.
I just feel like I can’t be the only one skewing the numbers a bit. While I don’t know how much audience crossover there is between a very bloody fantasy drama and a series of sporting events designed to unify countries, even if there’s only a few hundred thousand people who are prioritizing the Olympics, that would surely be enough to drop the night of viewership numbers down from a little over 9 million to 8.9 million, right?
Honestly, given I still very much plan to watch “The Queen Who Ever Was” after the closing ceremony, It’s also a possibility that perhaps more people are into the show in Season 2 and are just getting to the final episodes at a delayed rate.
Ultimately, 8.9 million viewers is a solid number for any TV show, and it’s up from the Season 2 premiere, indicating people have been catching up with the fantasy drama as it goes along anyway. HBO previously confirmed this (via Deadline) though it’s worth pointing out that in Live+ ratings the show is averaging fewer viewers in its long tail (25 million) than it was during Season 1 (29 million).
Given we now have an end date with Season 4, I’m very much not ready to give up on the Greens or Blacks. Winter (Olympics) may be coming, but as long as Max doesn’t switch to a wintertime premiere date, we shouldn’t have this overlap issue again.
