Rings Of Power Viewership Numbers Revealed (& They Exist HUGE)
Amazon has indicated its viewership numbers for the first time following the premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, and they’re massive. The streaming service has never published its viewership numbers before this, with the success of previous Amazon hits like Reacher and The Boys usually approximated through the streaming data from Nielsen’s Top 10, a third-party source. The Rings of Power premiered its first two episodes globally on Sept. 1.
The prequel series to The Lord of the Rings trilogy is set thousands of years before its ancestor and is based on J.R.R Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. The Rings of Power is no less epic than LotR, following an ensemble of 23 series familiars with season 1 budgeted at $465 million. Despite the staggering numbers of viewers who’ve already streamed the first two episodes, the show has earned some negative attention as well. The show has become another unfortunate victim of review bombing, sitting at a 37% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and causing Amazon to temporarily suspend reviews for Rings of Power. The site’s been flooded by bad-faith reviewers, many specifically decrying the show’s casting of actors of color to portray the inhabitants of Middle-Earth.
Regardless of the negative reviews, the show is a success, and Amazon’s got the numbers from the premiere to prove it. As reported by Variety, Amazon says the epic LotR prequel has been watched globally by 25 million viewers in the first 24 hours of its release. Amazon states The Rings of Power has broken “all previous records, marking the biggest premiere in the history of Prime Video.”
Rings of Power Orcs
It’s not difficult to imagine that some part of Amazon’s decision to break their usual tight-lipped seal on their viewership numbers has something to do with HBO’s The House of the Dragon. The other high-profile prequel to a culture-dominating fantasy series has often been pitted against The Rings of Power in fan discussions. It’s easy to see why when HBO does something like settling the House of the Dragon’s premiere on YouTube for free on the same day as Amazon’s series premieres. There’s also the proximity of their release dates and HBO boasting that an impressive 10 million people tuned in to the GoT prequel’s first episode which could have fueled any fire between the two shows.
The competition seems like it could have spurred Amazon into breaking its silence to show that House of the Dragon hasn’t won the fantasy streaming wars just yet. While Amazon didn’t specify the metrics they use to quantify exactly how much of an episode needs to be watched to qualify as a “view,” 25 million is an impressive amount. The Rings of Power has already been picked up for a second season, so there’s plenty of time for those numbers to grow to even more remarkable heights.