Competition in the battle for viewers has begun between HBO’s House of the Dragon and Amazon’s The Rings of Power. House of the Dragon, a prequel to Game of Thrones on HBO, takes viewers back in time about two centuries before the events of the original series and enjoys a similarly devoted fan following. J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings take place thousands of years before the events in Rings of Power. Nielsen’s streaming ranking for August 29–September 4 featured both series, with The Rings of Power coming out on top with 1.3 billion minutes seen, as reported by Variety.
The viewership for House of the Dragon was 61% lower than that of its competitor, placing it fifth overall with 781 million minutes. It should be emphasised, however, that Nielsen only tracks TV watching in the United States, not across any other platforms or regions. Since the Amazon series premiered on September 1 with just two episodes, its viewership was only counted for the most recent three days and a few hours of Nielsen’s watching window. House of the Dragon, on the other hand, didn’t return until September 4, only hours before Nielsen finished tallying for the week.
The premiere aired on August 21, the second on August 28, and the third on September 4. It’s worth noting that Rings of Power has an advantage over HBO’s offering because it’s a streaming exclusive because HBO’s cable viewing isn’t factored into Nielsen’s streaming ranking. Thus, the watching window of August 29–September 4 truly sets the roughly hour-long first two episodes of both shows against each other, where the streaming exclusivity offers Rings of Power an edge over its rival. According to Nielsen, there is a sizable audience for the television show House of the Dragon. About a third of the show’s total 9.9 million viewers (3. 2 million) saw the premiere on television.
In spite of this, the HBO show had the upper hand because the first two episodes were accessible to see all week long, while the third episode only had a little window to be viewed. Even though the show’s premiere occurred around the conclusion of Nielsen’s August 15-21 timeframe and so did not appear on the list, it nevertheless managed to rack up 327 million minutes of streaming viewing in its first few hours. For the 2nd week in a row, the original Game of Thrones series has topped the charts, surpassing House of the Dragon at No. 3 with 792 million minutes watched.
So, when you add up the 781 million minutes people spent watching the prequel, Game of Thrones does win as a franchise, even if LOTR didn’t have a long-running series leading up to it. Even though its viewership has dropped somewhat from the previous week’s 971 million minutes to this week’s 927 million, Netflix’s Me Time has maintained its No. 2 spot. NCIS, a staple of the Netflix top 10 most weeks, came in at #3. Every Sunday, you can tune in to HBO or HBO Asia to watch House of the Dragon. New episodes of Max and the Rings of Power are release every Friday on Amazon Prime Video.