SPOILER ALERT:
King’s Landing wasn’t the only thing that blew up on Sunday night!
According to numbers released today, ratings for the Game of Thrones Season 6 finale are the highest in the show’s history by a good margin.
An estimated 8.9 million viewers watched the live broadcast of Cersei’s massacre at the Sept of Baelor.
The record was previously held by the Season 5 finale, which pulled in 8.1 million.
In the all-important 18-49 demo, the series also beat its previous personal best.
“The Winds of Winter” notched an impressive 4.4 million viewers in that category.
The high water-mark prior to Sunday night was 4.1 million.
Of course, these days, the real measure of a show’s popularity is the live + 3 and live + 7 ratings. (Watching shows when they’re scheduled to air is totes for old people.)
Those numbers aren’t out yet for the finale, but Thrones has been killing it in said departments all season.
In fact, the show averaged 23.3 million viewers per episode across all platforms in Season 6.
Bolstered by strong word of mouth, the series’ ratings have been steadily climbing for the past three seasons.
HBO still spends a fortune on marketing, but it almost seems unnecessary at this point.
After the insane amount of online buzz that followed the penultimate episode, “Battle of the Bastards“, there was no way the Season 6 swan song was not going to deliver huge numbers.
Social media was abuzz with predictions, and fans know that once the show airs, avoiding spoilers becomes more and more difficult with each passing day.
Watch Game of Thrones online if you still need to catch up.
Just make sure you’re quick about it: Facebook is dark and full of spoilers.
