Game of Thrones beats The Sopranos to become the most watched HBO show ever
The hit fantasy series has dethroned Tony Soprano in a fight for the top spot
Game of Thrones isn't a show to shy away from a fight. I think we can all agree that this week's episode was evidence enough of that...
And it seems the hit fantasy series, based on the bloodthirsty books of George RR Martin, has won an off-screen battle too, beating acclaimed mob drama The Sopranos to become the most-watched show on HBO.
The recent series of Game of Thrones – which, eight episodes in has seen the shocking demise of numerous familiar faces (don't worry, I won't spoil anything for you here) – has surpassed HBO's previous popularity record set by Tony Soprano and co.
With two episodes left of series four, HBO has calculated that Game of Thrones has an average audience of 18.4 million weekly viewers across all platforms in the United States, overtaking the premium channel's previous record of 18.2 million set by The Sopranos back in 2002.
Game of Thrones' average audience during the previous series was 14.4 million, which marks a pretty impressive increase year-on-year. And the show is clearly pretty pleased by the news, tweeting:
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HBO took into account playback and on-demand service HBO Go when calculating Game of Thrones' average audience.
Game of Thrones continues on Mondays at 9:00pm on Sky Atlantic
