In a HotD vs RoP Ratings Battle There's a Clear Winner After All
House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are the largest shows of this year, but their similarities do not end there.
Both of them are epic and lavishly filmed fantasy stories, both of them are in their first season, setting up their grand-scale conflicts, and both of them have aired this autumn, in parallel. This, of course, means that they were in direct competition with each other.
And who managed to win that competition in the end? The streaming ratings company Nielsen and its handy chart can help to provide us a preliminary answer.
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According to Nielsen's data (via Variety), House of the Dragon started slowly, but gradually gained steam, although its numbers reached a plateau by mid-season. The Rings of Power, meanwhile, had a very, very strong start, but then experienced a significant drop-off in numbers, until the finale, when numbers rose again, though not to the massive levels shown by the first couple of episodes.
While the data demonstrates that Amazon's The Rings of Power won in streaming numbers on all weeks but one, keep in mind that House Of The Dragon was splitting its viewership with subscribers actually watching it on HBO, in addition to those who streamed it on HBO Max. The Rings of Power, meanwhile, is exclusively a streaming series on Prime Video.
Taking the latter into account, it appears that overall House of the Dragon was a substantially more popular show.
Then again, 40% of those who watched it also watched The Rings of Power. Also, the data for House of the Dragon is incomplete for now, as Nielsen has yet to release numbers on the final two weeks of House of the Dragon Season 1 viewership.
However, given how praised House of the Dragon's finale was, there is not likely to be a significant drop-off. Adding, again, the cable numbers, which in cause of House of the Dragon likely form the majority, or at least a very significant part, of its audience, we can only conclude that House of the Dragon won this competition – despite its audience being split between cable and streaming, it even managed to beat The Rings of Power for a week!