"Lord of the Rings" and "Game of Thrones" are among the most successful fantasy productions of all time. Their offshoots, "The Rings of Power" and "House of the Dragon", are now in direct competition with each other. However, the viewing figures clearly show who is more popular.
The major streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or Disney usually only announce the viewing figures for their series and films if they are successful. For the US market, however, the company Nielsen independently determines numbers that are published as a "Top 10 Streaming List". Only streaming shows seen on TV devices are included in this list of the best. In addition, in consultation with the streaming services, the numbers will only be announced after four weeks.
Therefore, Nielsen has only now published the "Top 10 Streaming List" for the week from August 29th to September 4th. And during this period, the two fantasy series "House of the Dragon" and "The Rings of Power" competed directly with each other for the first time - with a clear winner: Amazon's "Lord of the Rings" series climbed to 1.3 billion on TV devices the streaming throne. "House of the Dragon" only ranks fifth with 781 million minutes streamed - and still behind the parent series "Game of Thrones". As Variety notes, the number of viewed minutes is 61 percent lower than its big fantasy competitor from Amazon.
However, it should be noted that "The Rings of Power" can only be viewed via stream, while "House of the Dragon" can also be seen on classic cable television on the HBO channel in addition to streams on HBO Max. For example, of the 9.9 million viewers on the premiere night of "House of the Dragon" at the end of August, 3.2 million - or around a third - watched the series on HBO. However, these viewer numbers are not included in Nielsen's "Top 10 Streaming List".
Nevertheless, the top position of "The Rings of Power" represents a great success for Amazon's streaming service. No Prime Video series has yet debuted at number one in the Nielsen streaming rankings. In addition, the first two "House of the Dragon" episodes were available throughout the survey period, while the "Lord of the Rings" series only started on September 1st. So the first two episodes of the series were only available for viewing for three days and a few hours.
