“House of the Dragon” returned to HBO and Max with 7.8 million viewers on Sunday night, putting the Season 2 premiere 22% below the 10 million viewers that the “Game of Thrones” prequel series launched with in 2022.
Despite the drop, according to Warner Bros Discovery, the episode still led Max to its biggest streaming day ever. This can be explained at least in part by the fact that “House of the Dragon” Season 2 has been the service’s biggest premiere since launching in Europe in May. WBD also noted that this was the biggest Season 2 premiere that any of the company’s streamers have achieved in Europe — which was expected, as Max is generally more popular than Discovery+ and its now-defunct predecessors, HBO Go and HBO Now.
By contrast, Max was available in Latin America back when the first season of “House of the Dragon” premiered (though it was still known as HBO Max there until February), and Season 2 still marked the region’s biggest Max launch, drawing 30% more viewers than Season 1.
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WBD also says that in the week leading up to the Season 2 premiere, Season 1 saw its biggest streaming engagement in over 19 months, totaling 1 million viewers.
After premiering with 10 million viewers in 2022, “House of the Dragon” Season 1 hit its peak with Episode 2, reaching 10.2 million. Exact data was not made available for Episodes 3-9, but Episode 10 closed the season with 9.3 million viewers.
