Congratulates Staff Ahead Of ‘House Of The Dragon’ Premiere: “Next Big Cultural Moment”; HBO’s Largest Campaign Ever Reached 130M People.
EXCLUSIVE: In an email to staffers this morning, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav congratulated the HBO team and the overall conglom on what looks to be a fantastic weekend for both the linear channel and HBO Max in the premiere of the Game of Thrones spinoff, House of the Dragon.
Not only was this the biggest marketing campaign in HBO’s history, reaching 130M people in the U.S. for the $200M production, but the CEO points out that the endeavor exemplified a revived studio that is “committed to building one team with one mission.” We’ve heard from sources that the House of the Dragon marketing campaign indeed is bigger than anything that HBO ever pushed, including the second season of Euphoria and the final season of Game of Thrones, which averaged 44.2M per episode domestically. Talk about growing a franchise: When GoT premiered in 2011, its first episode drew 4.3M viewers.
House Of The Dragon’ World Premiere Red Carpet Photos
In regards to HBO viewing records and what House of the Dragon is up against, Euphoria Season 2 episodes averaged 16.3 million viewers each across all platforms, making it the best performance of a season for any HBO series other than Thrones since 2004. Viewership for the Season 2 premiere for the Zendaya-led show climbed to 19 million total viewers in the U.S. by February 28.
“It has also been exciting to see teams across the company work collaboratively with the HBO team in what has been an unprecedented cross-promotional campaign,” said Zaslav, “And we’ve done all of this in just a few short months, clearly showing what we can accomplish when our networks, streaming platforms, digital and social channels, all work collectively in support of one shared priority.”
The Warner Bros Discovery empire’s concerted promotional effort that Zaslav speaks of is one reminiscent of Comcast — which pushes its Universal tentpoles throughout all of the corporation’s ancillary tentacles — from Xfinity cable to airing spots during NBC shows.
‘House Of The Dragon’ Showrunners On Sealing The Deal With George R.R. Martin & Respecting The Legacy – Hero Nation PodcastHouse of the Dragon ads, per iSpot, aired across the WB Discovery universe including TBS (20.9%), Discovery (9.1%), TNT (7.7%), CNN (7.4%) and Food Network (6.6%). The advertising stat org says that the series repped 99.1% of the HBO’s promo TV ad impressions since July 20. Those shows that ran HOTD ads included re-runs of The Big Bang Theory, Friends, Young Sheldon, as well as Dr. Phil and Expedition Unknown, per iSpot. There have even been bottom-of-the-screen pop-up ads running during HGTVprogramming .