HBO's big bet 'House of the Dragon' arrives with a splash (and some crashes)
A watershed moment for HBO (NASDAQ:WBD) has arrived with a new attempt to light a fire under its viewership. House of the Dragon, its first of a number of planned follow-ups to iconic hit Game of Thrones (and a prequel to that series), made its ballyhooed debut on the premium TV service Sunday night.
While early viewing numbers are under wraps so far, there was some limited information to draw from the fact that HBO's app crashed for at least a few thousand viewers as the show premiered - something that happened at times during some heavily watched season premieres for Game of Thrones, which was likely the biggest show on television in its final season.
How much such crashes are due to a crush of viewers, vs. some possibly underpowered streaming server hardware, is always open to debate in this shifting TV era. But HBO Max took pains to update its user interface earlier in August, ahead of a likely overhaul in the coming year before it comes with Discovery+.
Some commenters on Twitter (along with HBO itself) were quick to note that problems seemed to centralize in the HBO Max app connecting via Amazon's (AMZN) Fire TV devices. Even HBO pointing that fact out has some heavy undercurrents: Amazon is making its own big bid for a Game of Thrones-size success with its extremely expensive Lord of the Rings series The Rings of Power.
The Rings of Power is expected to cost nearly $500M for one season, whereas Game of Thrones was considered an expensive television show at about $100M per season. (And both The Rings of Power and House of the Dragon are considered likely challenges for subscriber growth at Netflix (NFLX).)
House of the Dragon is based on the book Fire & Blood, by Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, and is set 200 years before the events in Game of Thrones.
Game of Thrones grew its audience for each of its eight seasons, and that viewership swelled from just over 2M viewers for the series premiere to upwards of 44M in its last run. House of the Dragon could improve on that, though, bearing in mind that the earlier series came when HBO streamed only through authenticated app HBO Go - and HBO Max is now available a la carte.
HBO hasn't held back. After Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) CEO David Zaslav took the helm of the combined company a few months ago, he noted that the marketing push for House of the Dragon is HBO's biggest and most expensive ever.