Game of Thrones season 8 trailer reveal sets records — shocker

Yes, you read that correctly — we are here to write you an article telling you that Game of Thrones is popular. Still, there’s still some value in illustrating just exactly how popular it is. This is a show that is poised this spring to devour records like those dragons do to any poor animal they come across. It’s one of the few shows people will routinely pay for, even the high price of an HBO subscription (and even if they don’t watch anything else — though Barry is really good).

Now that we’ve made our initial point clear, let’s get to actually sharing some of the real, tangible numbers. The season 8 trailer, per Deadline, was watched 81 million times across its platforms over the first 24 hours of its release. That’s incredible for a trailer that really didn’t actually show that much. Don’t get us wrong — it was awesome to speculate about Jon Snow riding a dragon and to see the foundation laid for the Battle of Winterfell a.k.a. the biggest battle in the history of television. It just didn’t actually reveal much of the plot.

This is the brilliance of where we are at now with Game of Thrones. Typically there are a lot of rules for what works and doesn’t work within the world of TV promotion.

What doesn’t work – Airing a show more than a year and a half after your most-recent season.

What doesn’t work – Giving your show super-small episode orders.

What doesn’t work – Having so many cast members that it’s IMPOSSIBLE for anyone to remember all of them.

What doesn’t work – Cheesy promos like revealing your premiere date within a block of ice.

What doesn’t work – Having trailers that don’t actually tell you too much about specific story-related events.

What does work – Being Game of Thrones. Seriously. That’s all it is. If you are Game of Thrones, you can break the wheel to quite a classic Daenerys line. You can do virtually whatever you want and know that you’re okay on the other side of it. It’s a crazy thing to think about but this show defies logic. Thank the story, the action, the dragons, or really all of the above. All that matters are those 81 million viewers and the ratings that this show is going to draw when it actually airs next month.

Note: Don’t exact it to draw 81 million viewers. These initial trailer numbers are likely global, whereas HBO only counts the Game of Thrones viewers here in the USA … at least for the Nielsen ratings we all get to take a gander at.

The biggest takeaway of all

HBO should go ahead and start developing about five more spin-off ideas. They don’t want to over-saturate their brand, but they really need to come up with some sort of situation where there’s something new Game of Thrones related every single year following this final season airing. There is an ungodly amount of money to be made here, more than House Lannister ever saw in their whole lives.

If for some reason you haven’t seen the trailer as of yet…

You can take a look at it below.

What do you think about some of these astronomical viewing figures for the Game of Thrones season 8 trailer? 

Be sure to sound off in the comments! (Photo: HBO.)