Amazon Keeps Mum on Rings of Power Audience Size, Fools Nobody
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is probably the most lavishly funded TV series ever, with the budget of over $58 million per episode, so it stands to reason that to be rightfully called 'successful', it should be not simply among Amazon Prime Video's most watched original series, but among the most watched TV series ever.
But most likely it isn't. There is no other explanation why Amazon is so reluctant to release any sort of hard numbers about its viewership.
In the course of the series' entire run, Amazon released just one figure quantifying its performance, claiming the first two episodes were streamed by 25 million viewers globally in their first 24 hours of availability on the platform, and saying that this figure marked "the biggest premiere in the history of Prime Video. "
In the three weeks since Season 1 finale, just one – and vague – number was added to that. Amazon Studios chief Jennifer Salke in an interview with Variety said that that The Rings of Power is closing in on 100 million viewers to date.
Now, Amazon has always been tight-lipped regarding its internal data – we still don't even know an exact subscriber total for Prime Video. But it is not averse to disclosing viewership figures when these figures are something to boast about, as is the case with Thursday Night Football, the NFL broadcast Amazon paid a massive amount of money to acquire. For example, very recently Amazon disputed the viewership figures for Thursday Night Football, provided by Nielsen. Amazon obviously has no strict rule against releasing viewership numbers.
Why, then, Amazon is not forthcoming regarding the numbers for its flagship series? Almost certainly because these numbers are not exactly something to boast about.
Sure, as we have already talked about, The Rings of Power has performed well… but it did not achieve the massive success necessary to justify its massive budget.
By comparison, the direct competitor of the series, HBO's House of the Dragon, averaged 29 millions viewers per episode across all platforms in the US (via Deadline). We cannot say how the figure of 100 million viewers specified for The Rings of Power stack up to this average. Most importantly, Salke did not tell whether her figure was cumulative, across all episodes, or whether each episode averaged close to 100 million viewers. But Amazon's very unwillingness to clarify things points strongly towards the former.