‘Game of Thrones’ Season 8 Trailer Breaks Major HBO Viewing Record

Game of Thrones Season 8 will be the television event of the year, as just the trailer itself set an HBO viewing record.

The trailer for Game of Thrones Season 8 was released on Tuesday, and the rest of the internet came to a screeching halt. The two-minute teaser gave fans their first look at the show’s epic finale, and they couldn’t get enough. Within 24 hours, the trailer had over 81 million views.

That shattered HBO’s previous trailer viewership record, which of course was also held by Game of Thrones, according to a report by Deadline Hollywood. In 2017, the show’s Season 7 trailer got 61 million views in 24 hours, counting all platforms such as YouTube and Twitter.

Of course, those numbers have continued to climb as fans pick apart the trailer from every angle, developing fan theories and looking for hints or Easter eggs. At the time of this writing, the trailer has almost 41.25 million views on YouTube, 31.6 million views on Twitter and 32 million views on Facebook, for a combined total of nearly 145 million views.

That is not even counting the re-uploads, breakdowns and analyses across social media. Fans have spun out tons of other videos from the trailer to try and glean some clues for the upcoming season, creating a small cottage industry online.

Of course, the executives at HBO are hoping that this will translate to concrete views when the show itself debuts next month. Game of Thrones Season 8 is expected to break all kinds of records as it draws the beloved fantasy series to a close in six epic, movie-length episodes.

Again, analysts are looking back to last season to make predictions. The Season 7 opener holds the series’ highest premiere rating with 12.07 million viewers. If Season 8 were to beat the previous record as the trailer did, that would mean over 16 million viewers for the upcoming episode.

It sounds like a tall order, but anything is possible with this beloved show. Game of Thrones has defined the decade for many people, and they will be sad to see it go. Before that, of course, we’ll have to find out how the story ends and who winds up sitting on the Iron Throne — if there is a throne left to sit on.

Game of Thrones Season 8 premieres on Sunday, April 14 at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.