Game of Thrones season 7 is just over a month gone…we’re currently in the Long Night before the final season, may the Lord of Light have mercy on our souls. HBO is feeling the burn, too. After all, Game of Thrones is more than just our favorite pop cultural obsession; it’s also big business. This season set ratings records for the network, and drove subscriptions for HBO Now, its over-the-top streaming service.
But since HBO Now launched in 2015, it’s had a problem: viewers have subscribed right before the period when Game of Thrones airs…and then dropped it soon after the end of the season. According to app-research firm Sensor Tower, HBO Now revenue fell off by 22% following the end of season 5, and 40% following season 6. If HBO wants this service to be self-sustaining, it’ll probably have to do better than that.
This year, it did. While revenues still fell following the season 7 finale, they did so by only 7%, a notable improvement over the past drop-offs. Why the improvement? Maybe they stuck around to watch The Wire creator David Simon’s new drama The Deuce, about the rise of the pornography industry in the early 1970s. Maybe they’re holding on to watch the second season of Westworld, the network’s other big sci-fi/fantasy drama, which premieres this spring.
Or maybe, after two years of subscribing and unsubscribing, people have just decided that it’s easier to live with HBO Now than go back and forth. Whatever the reason, it looks like the subscriber base is stabilizing, which is great news for the network. “What we’ve seen over the past year is that we were more right than we imagined,” HBO CEO Richard Plepner said of the over-the-top service at an Advertising Week event. Sounds about right.
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