In the battle between House of the Dragon and Rings of Power, the Game of Thrones prequel series took the early viewership lead.
It’s a good time to be a fan of wide-spanning fantasy television, as both Game of Thrones and the Lord of the Rings have prequel shows airing at the same time.
House of the Dragon, which takes a look at the internal strife of House Targaryen long before the battle for the Iron Throne, was a massive success upon its premiere.
But Rings of Power also had a strong showing for Amazon Prime Video. The question, for many viewers, is which show got off to a stronger start.
House of the Dragon’s viewership outperforms Rings of Power
According to the third-party streaming researcher SambaTV, the premiere episodes of Amazon’s Rings of Power was viewed in 1.8 million households in the four days following its release.
While that number might seem impressive at first glance, it pales in comparison to what its biggest competitor drew.
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The House of the Dragon premiere episode was seen in 2.6 million households just on the night it premiered, SambaTV says.
Middle-Earth v Westeros has a winner in the US according to 3rd party researcher #SambaTV, as new #PrimeVideo’s #TheRingsOfPower was watched in 1.8M US Households in first 4 days. #HouseOfTheDragon had 2.6M just on SUN premiere night alone.But #TROP had victories as well.1/5 pic.twitter.com/S2u1E9a7OT
— Luiz Fernando (@Luiz_Fernando_J) September 6, 2022
However, when comparing the two shows over the same timespan following their premieres, the gap becomes even more pronounced.
House of the Dragon brought in 4.8 million households in the four days after it premiered, the biggest debut of a new show or series in 2022. That is almost triple the number of viewers the Rings of Power drew.
Considering series released on streaming in 2022 measured by #SambaTV, it’s the #4 biggest debut of 2022, only below#HoTD’s 4.8M, #StrangerThings’s 2.9M & #ObiWanKenobi’s 2.1M, beating #MoonKnight which took 5 days to reach same 1.8M US households #TheRingsOfPower reached.4/5 pic.twitter.com/xsQ4ElEhMJ
— Luiz Fernando (@Luiz_Fernando_J) September 6, 2022
However, Samba is quick to point out that this 1.8 million household number is nothing to sniff at.
In fact, Rings of Power became the fourth-biggest new series debut of the year, behind House of the Dragon, Stranger Things Season 4, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, just beating out Moon Knight.