Even though a few episodes of Game of Thrones’ fifth season leaked online hours before the season started on Sunday night, the episode still set a new record in ratings.
The episode drew just under 8 million viewers, reports The Hollywood Reporter. That’s 1.4 million viewers more than last year’s premiere and 800,000 more from the May 14, 2014 episode, which previously held the record as the most-watched episode.
Game of Thrones is similar to The Walking Dead, in that both shows have only seen their ratings go up since they debuted. As Variety notes, the first season of GOT “only” averaged 2.52 million viewers for first airings of episodes. Last year’s season averaged 6.84 million viewers. The series is also officially HBO’s most-watched show.
The show has also survived in spite of rampant pirating. TorrentFreak even reported that the first four episodes of the season were leaked online via press copies. There were over a million downloads of the episodes after just 18 hours.
image of ‘Game of Thrones’ star Nicolas Coster-Waldau courtesy of Famous/ACE/INFphoto.com