Almost 3.4million Britons tune in to watch Game of Thrones

Almost 3.4million Britons tuned in to watch Game of Thrones season eight premiere in the first 24 hours

Sky has announced recording-breaking 3.4m watched new series premiere
Around 192,000 people stayed up to watch Game of Thrones at 2am on Monday
Another 2.7m watched throughout day before 698,000 watched 9pm showing
It beats previous record of 3.03m who watched series seven finale in 2017

By Joseph Curtis and Rory Tingle For Mailonline

Published: 13:30 BST, 16 April 2019 | Updated: 13:55 BST, 16 April 2019

A record-breaking 3.4million Brits tuned in to the first episode of the final series of Game of Thrones yesterday, figured have revealed today.

The premiere of season eight was first broadcast at 2am UK time as it was aired simultaneously in the US on HBO, with almost 200,000 superfans staying up late to be the first to see what happened in Westeros.

A total of 2.7million, including the overnight viewers, then watched the episode, called Winterfell, throughout the day on demand or by recording it, before another 698,000 tuned into a 9pm showing on Sky Atlantic.

The total 3.4million viewers combined is a new record for Sky, beating the final episode of season seven, which was watched by a total of 3.03million people.

Winterfell was also up 20 per cent on the first episode of season seven, which had an audience of 2.8million.

Almost 3.4million Brits watched the return of Game of Thrones yesterday in a record-breaking audience for Sky, including 192,000 who stayed up until 2am to watch the first episode of series eight (pictured) being broadcast at the same time as it was shown on HBO in the US.

Many viewers were excited to see the return of Queen Daenerys’s dragons Drogon, right, and Rhaegal, left

Fans welcomed back familiar faces including Sophie Turner as Sansa Stark, left, and Lena Headey as Queen Cersei

Meanwhile it also broke records in the US, where HBO said viewers peaked at 17.4million, eclipsing the show’s previous high of 16.9 million viewers for the Season 7 finale in 2017.

It comes after anticipation had been steadily building for the debut of the new series following almost two years without the popular show.

The figure is expected to increase significantly as more Game Of Thrones fans catch up on the series premiere on demand, through Sky + recordings and through repeats.

After the broadcast, fans in the UK said they were relieved they could “finally come out of hiding” after making it to the series eight debut without hearing any spoilers.

Many people tuning in to the second showing said they had stayed off social media all day in case any of the programme’s secrets were spilled before they could watch for themselves.

British fans took to social media to share their sense of anticipation, which built to a frenzy in the minutes before the episode aired

One billion tuned in as the highly anticipated Game of Thrones kicked off its eighth and final season on HBO Sunday night with the season premiere, the first of a six-episode final season

Twitter was dominated by excited Game Of Thrones for hours after the show had finished airing, with many calling the episode ‘incredible’, pictured

Many fans were delighted with the episode, particularly the reunion between Arya Stark and Jon Snow, pictured

The eighth season of Game of Thrones is said to be the most expensive season of TV ever shot, with a budget of $15million (£11.5million).

And on social media, Sunday’s premiere was the most-tweeted-about episode of the show ever, with more than 5 million Tweets, and 11 million mentions throughout the course of the weekend, HBO said.

Fan reaction was overwhelmingly positive, with several viewers calling the first episode ‘incredible’, ‘great’ and ‘well worth the wait’. Fan Ollie Hodge wrote: ‘Worst thing about staying up until 2am to watch #GameofThrones is thinking you’ll be able to sleep after!! That was incredible!! @GameOfThrones @HBO_UK.’

Celebrity obsessives also got in on the act, led by actress Reese Witherspoon, Tony award winner Kristin Chenoweth and US Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon. Witherspoon tweeted in the frenzied hours before the opening credits: ‘Have a very important date with my couch tonight… excited is an understatement!!!!!! #GameofThrones #MotherofDragons.’

And what to say if you DIDN’T watch… A bluffer’s guide to Game of Thrones

It has millions of fans all around the globe, but believe it or not there are some television viewers out there who are yet to watch an episode of Game of Thrones.

Based on US writer George RR Martin’s epic fantasy ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ novels, and thought to have been loosely inspired by the Wars of the Roses, the series tells the tale of warring families and their attempts to control their world of Westeros.

Among them are the earnest northerners the Starks – originally headed by Sean Bean’s patriarch, Ned – and the Lannisters – the blond-haired power-hungry clan including incestuous siblings Cersei (Lena Headey) and Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), plus their younger brother, family outcast, Tyrion, played by Peter Dinklage.

Oh yes, and there are dragons. Three to be precise, sometimes controlled by Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys Targaryen, who sees Westeros’s Iron Throne as her birth right, after her father and brother were killed in a bloody rebellion, in which the Starks and Lannisters played an important role, before the start of the series.

Meanwhile, a troop of terrifying blue-eyed White Walkers and their army of reanimated zombies, aka Wights, could render the rest of the characters’ tussles completely meaningless as they ominously parade down from the snow-covered North, threatening to destroy everyone in their wake.

Sometimes written off as ‘t**s and dragons’, notably by Lovejoy star Ian McShane, who gave a memorable cameo in the sixth GoT series, the show is particularly famous for its racy sex scenes and the grizzly deaths that befall most of the characters (current death count, 174,373 as of the end of series 7).

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