Game of Thrones’ season six premiere broke viewing records for Sky drama with a total of 2.2 million watching the opening episode of season six.
About 60,000 hardcore fans tuned in to watch Game of Thrones at 2am on Monday morning, a simulcast timed with HBO’s premiere of the latest series in the US.
A total of 1.4 million Sky subscribers watched live, recorded or viewed the 2am broadcast at some point on Monday.
Some 816,000 viewers tuned in on Monday night.
The combined viewing of 2.19 million broke the previous record of nearly 1.6 million viewers who tuned in to watch the fifth series opener in 2015.
The season six premiere is the biggest ever overnight audience for a Sky Atlantic show and the most-watched Game of Thrones episode, with a 39% increase over the fifth series opener.
However, 2015’s fifth season launch did not benefit from having a simulcast at 2am, so more people watched at 9pm.
Sky said the overnight ratings for season six are “just a fraction” of the total audience the show will get once catch-up figures are included.
Sky is estimating a viewing uplift of about 70%, meaning the season six premiere could end with a consolidated audience of more than 3.7 million.
The company also said there has been a flurry of Sky customers looking to get on the Game of Thrones cult bandwagon, or get a refresh of the story so far, with 7.1m downloads of seasons one to five over the past six weeks.
Unusually for a pay-TV channel, Sky’s 9pm broadcast alone trumped the viewing figures of one of the main terrestrial channels beating Horizon: How to Find Love Online on BBC2 (655,000).
The 9pm broadcast of Game of Thrones also pulled in more viewers than those who tuned in to see Tottenham Hotspur’s chances of a Premier League title dramatically diminish after a draw with West Bromwich Albion on Sky Sports (759,000).
