In their first head-to-head ratings battle, Amazon Prime Video’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” series beat out HBO Max’s “House of the Dragon” in the former’s launch week.
For the week of August 29th-September 4th, the first two episodes of the ‘Rings’ series racked up 1.25 billion minutes of streaming, according to Nielsen.
That’s compared with 781 million for ‘Dragon’ with three episodes released at that point. It came in fifth for the week (behind its predecessor “Game of Thrones” in fourth with 792 million).
The catch for ‘Dragon’? The Nielsen numbers track only viewing via a TV set through HBO Max – so linear HBO, multiplex viewing and on-demand orders are not counted. HBO has said the show is averaging 29 million viewers across all platforms per episode.
The ‘Rings’ win marks Amazon’s first No. 1 finish for any series in its opening weekend since Nielsen began tracking streaming in 2020.
Source: Deadline
