‘Game of Thrones’ season 6, episode 9 ratings: ‘Battle of the Bastards’ continues strong tradition

Did an event episode of “Game of Thrones” lead to a ratings bump? Not exactly, mostly because we’re not entirely sure that there is such a thing as an event episode for this show anymore. All of them have been fantastic in their own way, and this is the sort of show you don’t want to miss out on watching live.

We expected going into “Battle of the Bastards” that the whole Jon Snow vs. Ramsay Bolton battle could have surged things up to a 4.0 rating in the demo, and that didn’t happen … not that we really think that HBO is crying themselves to sleep over it. In the end, this enormous episode (which led to the deaths of Rickon Stark, Ramsay, and others) drew a 3.9 rating, effectively even with the hour that aired before it. It was actually up around 60,000 viewers versus the week before, scoring 7.66 million in total. Given that this is only a live+same day rating sample and there are so many people who watch “Game of Thrones” through non-traditional means, it is fair to say that the actual viewership for this battle is significantly higher.

We do love to do the whole year-to-year comparisons, and for “Game of Thrones” and this battle it is still a positive one given that the show was up about a 0.2 in the demo and around half a million viewers versus the ninth episode of season 5. The big challenge may come next week matching the 4.1 rating that the finale drew in 2015.

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