"The “Game of Thrones” season finale Sunday night smashed a series record for ratings, attracting 12.1 million viewers, according to Nielsen. HBO said on Monday that when views on HBO Go and its stand-alone HBO Now app were included, the 79-minute episode had 16.5 million viewers. Though “Game of Thrones” has been HBO’s most popular show ever for some time, its audience is getting only bigger. Sunday’s total viewership was up 36 percent over last year’s finale, which had 8.9 million viewers, and it was 19 percent better than the sixth-season premiere in July, which had 10.1 million viewers. There’s also plenty of delayed viewing, apparently: HBO said that each episode of the current season is averaging more than 30 million viewers across platforms, which is nearly eight million more viewers than at the end of last season." #game_of_thrones #phenomenon #ratings #viewers #statistics #records #pub