Game of Thrones has seen its audience continuously grow – a rarity for television shows, as they typically lose viewership over the course of their runs.

In the US, the the first episode of the final season of HBO’s fantasy-behemoth delivered 17.4 million viewers on April 15^th across multiple airings and including some streaming.

In the UK, the show drew an audience of 3.4 million for Sky Atlantic – with around 200,000 watching the US simulcast that aired at 2am – according to Barb.

It has also been claimed that, globally, 1 billion tuned into the season 8 premiere.

4C Insights compared the social noise around the premiere of Game of Thrones S7 and S8, on Facebook and Twitter, now that most of the UK will have watched the 1st episode. The findings revealed that Game of Thrones engagers are way more vocal about S8 and taking to social – a 73.6 per cent increase in social media engagers, talking about Game of Thrones, on the day after the two premieres.

However, Game of Thrones engagers were not as satisfied with the S8 premiering episode to the S7. The Sentiment of conversations on social media decreased from 66 per cent the following day last year, compared to 63 per cent the day after airing this year.

So although the audience for the show has grown, it appears that viewers were not as positive about the S8 premiere as they were for S7. 4C Insights speculates that all the hype and anticipation resulted in higher expectations

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