Season 2 of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” was the second-most-watched streaming original series in the U.S. between Aug. 30 to Sept. 2 — the four days of Labor Day weekend — per Luminate.
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This marked the season’s first weekend of streaming, but excludes its first day on Aug. 29. Amazon Prime Video has released three episodes so far, adding up to a cumulative 204-minute runtime. Therefore, the episodes’ 553.5 million minutes watched during that time translate to an estimate of 2.7 million views.
The only series to beat “The Rings of Power,” per Luminate’s measurement, was “Worst Ex Ever,” which reached 633.3 million minutes watched in the same amount of time. But because the Netflix series runs than the first three episodes of “Rings of Power,” running for 230 minutes, the two series were more even in terms of estimated views. “Worst Ex Ever” finished the weekend with 2.8 million views, calculated by dividing total time watched by the project’s runtime.
It’s likely that “Rings of Power” will continue to chart highly in the weeks to come, as there are five remaining episodes set to drop weekly on Thursdays, though Season 2 has had a slightly slower start compared to the series debut in 2022. Per Luminate, Season 1’s Labor Day opening brought in 1.2 billion minutes watched in four days, or 8.9 million estimated views when accounting for the 132-minute runtime of the two episodes that were initially made available. It’s to be expected that a major IP title would see a dropoff between Season 1 and 2 — a comparable title, HBO’s “House of the Dragon,” saw 7.8 million viewers with its second season opener compared to 10 million with its series premiere — though “Rings of Power’s” was steeper.
When asked about viewership goals and expectations ahead of the Season 2 premiere of “Rings of Power,” Vernon Sanders, head of U.S. and global TV for Amazon MGM Studios, emphasized to Variety that the company’s roughly $100 million to $150 million investment per season also operates to “drive people through all of the avenues of Amazon,” including retail and music. “We’re looking to bring people to the service and we’re hoping to get lots of signups again.”
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It is not yet known whether Amazon will release proprietary data about “Rings of Power” Season 2 viewership, though further measurement from Luminate as well as Nielsen will provide a fuller picture in the weeks to come.
(Disclosure: Variety and Luminate share a common owner in PMC.)
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