The April 6 season premiere of Game of Thrones delivered the show's biggest audience ever on Sunday night. The fantasy drama's fourth season debuted with 6.6 million viewers, making it HBO's most-watched program since 2007's The Sopranos series finale, which brought in 11.9 million viewers.
The Season 4 premiere ratings show enormous potential growth for Game of Thrones year-to-year. The debut is 2.2 million higher than Game of Thrones Season 3, which opened to 4.4 million viewers. The season peaked with 5.5 million and ended with 5.4 million for the finale. Given Game of Thrones' track record of growing its audience as the season progresses, it's possible for the show to outdo The Sopranos and eventually become HBO's highest-rated program of all time.
Some audiences, however, were shut out of viewing the Game of Thrones Season 4 premiere: Online viewership was so huge that the cable network's streaming service HBO Go crashed due to "overwhelming demand." HBO Go users suffered the same problem during the March 9 finale of True Detective.
It seemingly took more than five hours to restore the service in full.
Looks like there's trouble in the realm. Apologies for the inconvenience. We'll be providing updates, so please stay tuned. #GameofThrones
Having trouble accessing @HBO GO? Send a raven. @GameOfThrones will be available soon on HBO On Demand with some cable providers.
We're sorry for all of the trouble, but if you're an @HBO subscriber, the @GameOfThrones premiere replays at 11 PM EST.
The service has returned to several platforms and we’re working hard towards full recovery, which we expect soon.
Thanks for your patience #GOT fans. The service is now restored. For any further issues please email: contacthbogo@hbo.com