'Game of Thrones' Now The Most Watched Series In Australia

Game of Thrones,” or "GoT," broke pay-TV records in Australia as millions of viewers tuned in to watch the highly anticipated Season 5 premiere Monday night. Despite the first four episodes being leaked online over the weekend, the premiere of the books-turned-series still managed to set "GoT" as the most watched series on Australian subscription TV.

According to ratings figures released by GoT Australian broadcaster Foxtel, the TV adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Fire and Ice” garnered over 242,000 viewers for the 11 a.m. local time premiere on the “Showcase” channel, The Hollywood Reporter stated. A further 311,000 viewers were added to the count for the encore screening at 7:30 p.m., giving an astounding cumulative average audience of 553,000. The pay-TV provider also confirmed that the figures showed a 76 percent increase from the Season 4 launch last year.

The figures however are still not inclusive of the viewers who watched the first episode on Foxtel Play, which is Foxtel’s IPTV service. The cable company is set to release consolidated audience figures for all the screenings of the show in the next 10 days. It is also predicted that the number of viewers at hand will shoot up throughout the week as subscribers who missed the premiere try to catch up.

Meanwhile, the said season opener was also successfully able to land a new audience record for the Sky Atlantic network in the UK, Yahoo reported. Statistics showed a total of 1.57 million viewers for the live show, which was a 6.7 percent share of the overall audience and a 29 percent rise from the Season 4 premiere. Sky Altantic was able to beat free-to-air channels BBC Two and Channel 5 in the same time slot.

Moreover, Nielsen TV ratings confirmed that Australians viewed more than 500,000 “Game of Thrones” related tweets last night, The Northern Star reported. This feat marks the Season 5 premiere as the biggest non-sport TV event on Twitter in Australia.

The first four episodes of the Season 5 premiere had been leaked online a day before it was scheduled to air on TV. The disclosed episodes, with no determined source as of the moment, had been downloaded by over 700,000 people worldwide, according to piracy-tracking firm Excipio. This was no longer a surprise to many, as “Game of Thrones” is infamously known for its piracy records and was even previously named the most illegally downloaded TV show in 2014.

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