‘Game of Thrones’ season 5 premiere sets record, despite episode leak

Clearly, “Game of Thrones” season 5 is not suffering too much at all from having its first four episodes leak onto the internet. Despite the controversy and the misfortune for the network, the series still set a record on HBO Sunday night with a massive 4.2 rating in the 18-49 demographic. It also drew almost eight million viewers. HBO does not care nearly as much about the demo given that they have no advertisers to pay, but even still, this is a number you should feel really strongly about when comparing it to demo ratings elsewhere. Think about this: “Game of Thrones” outperformed some recent episodes of “The Big Bang Theory” in the demo. Crazy impressive for a premium cable show.

Note that this number does not even include viewers through on-demand, DVR, or the other streaming formats that are not measured in traditional ways. This just shows what the demand for “Game of Thrones” truly is, that there are probably some out there ready to pay big money just to watch it for a few months on television.

Will this rating stay the entirety of the season? Probably not, since premiere numbers are typically the highest. However, we’re going to be curious about the viewing figures for episode five. That is the first one for the series that has not been leaked previously, and that may give the show a chance to really draw in some enormous figures. Then again, we all may be over-inflating the number of pirated views in the United States. The majority of downloads tend to take place outside of the country, or at least this has seemingly been the case in the past.

More new episodes will air on HBO over the course of the weeks ahead, and we’ll have much more coverage!

For now, head over here to watch a preview for the next new “Game of Thrones” episode! Also, you can sign up now in the event you want some other TV news on everything we cover sent over to you, courtesy of our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: HBO.)