HBO
"Game of Thrones"
- The season eight premiere of "Game of Thrones" was the show's most watched ever across all of HBO's platforms.
- We looked at how "Game of Thrones'" HBO numbers compare to Nielsen ratings for 2018's biggest shows, including "Roseanne" and "This Is Us."
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The "Game of Thrones" final season premiere was watched by a series-best 17.4 million viewers across all of HBO's platforms on Sunday. But how does that stack up to TV's other popular shows?
It's difficult to compare "Game of Thrones'" viewership directly to shows on broadcast and cable networks. The HBO fantasy series is a mega-hit whose viewership includes a lot of HBO Go/Now streaming viewers, and viewers who pirate the show illegally, which would not be captured by traditional Nielsen ratings.
Sunday's episode, "Winterfell," was pirated 54 million times in 24 hours, three times the size of HBO's official viewership, according to piracy-analytics company Muso. The top three countries where the show was pirated were India, China, and the US. Six minutes of the premiere were cut by Chinese censors, which could have prompted fans to seek alternatives.
And HBO said on Monday that viewership for its standalone streaming platform, HBO Now, grew by 50% from the season seven finale, and by 97% from the season seven premiere.
In the US, Dish also still hasn't picked up HBO as its dispute over a carrying deal rages on, so Dish customers could have sought out other means. HBO said this could have also affected the 9 p.m. airing of the episode, which was watched by 11.8 million viewers, fewer than the 12.1 million viewers of the season seven finale.
But those factors aside, we can compare the top-rated shows from 2018, based on Nielsen ratings, to what we know about the "Game of Thrones" premiere to get a rough idea of how it stacks up.
"Roseanne" held tight the entire year as the biggest show of 2018. The revival was quickly canceled after one season after the show's star Roseanne Barr tweeted a racist remark at former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. It was replaced with a spin-off named "The Conners," which premiered in October to lower, but not bad, ratings.
Meanwhile, "The Big Bang Theory" entered its 12th and final season last year with the usual strong numbers, and its prequel, "Young Sheldon," continued to be a hit for CBS, as well.
Below are the nine biggest shows of 2018, according to Nielsen ratings, and where "Game of Thrones" would fit in, based on HBO's official numbers: