The Paramount Network’s Yellowstone premiered its fifth season this week, and to massive ratings–better than Yellowstone Season 4 and better than HBO’s Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon, Variety reports.
Yellowstone Season 5 premiered on Sunday across the Paramount Network, CMT, TV Land, and Pop; these networks have done this for previous seasons as well, Variety notes. On its chief platform, Paramount Network, Yellowstone Season 5 lassoed 8.8 million users, up from 8 million for the Season 4 premiere. Across all four networks, though, that number climbs to 10.3 million, which would seem to suggest that all of the show’s growth took place on Paramount Network. Encore airings increased that number to 12.1 million viewers.
Compared this to HBO’s House of the Dragon, which airs on HBO and HBO Max, this is especially impressive. HBO’s Game of Thrones spinoff drew in 9.99 million viewers across the two services when it premiered in August. House of the Dragon episodes averaged closer to 30 million when accounting for users catching up later in the season, encore airings on HBO, and things like that. There’s no data yet on how Yellowstone compares to that number.
Yellowstone tells the story of the Dutton family and their massive Yellowstone Dutton ranch in Montana. In the Season 5 premiere, John Dutton (Kevin Costner) is now governor of Montana, changing the scales of power within the Dutton family and the ranch.
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