‘LOTR: The Rings of Power’ Wins Streaming Battle For Prime Video

The battle for rating dominance is intensifying as streaming stats for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power are finally unveiled. Debuting just behind House of the Dragon, a question of which title would reign supreme once Neilsen’s ratings were in has finally been answered.

Both HBO and Prime Video provided extra large budgets for their big genre dramas this summer, expecting the high production values to bring ratings wins. While HBO is long established and has high expectations for a show picking up where Game of Thrones left off, House of the Dragon didn’t crush The Rings of Power the way it might have hoped to in minutes watched.

(Credit: Matt Grace / ©Amazon / Courtesy Everett Collection)

In fact, The Rings of Power actually took the top spot on minutes watched from August 29 – Sept 1, with 1.25 billion minutes to House of the Dragon‘s 781 million. There is a caveat though — the way Neilsen SVOD (streaming) ratings work, they only track streaming minutes watched through a TV set, so this doesn’t include the viewers streaming on computers, or linear HBO. They also only track US audiences — so the total number is likely quite different. HBO has said they are averaging 29 million viewers across all platforms per episode of House of the Dragon.

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Regardless of the total viewer count, Amazon is celebrating this big streaming battle win. It is their biggest ratings success since Reacher, which saw 1.84 billion minutes viewed on opening weekend. While that might seem like more people tuned in for Reacher, since they released all eight episodes at once, and Rings only released two, Rings averaged more individual viewers at 9.5 million.