Game of Thrones has become a pop cultural moment to the point where it is drawing people away from adult videos.
Pornhub’s insight statisticians found that traffic to the site was down by 4.5% during the broadcast of episode 1 of the new season, a “considerable change in visitors as Sunday night is one of the most popular times for people to visit Pornhub”.
The first episode of Season 6 in April 2016 resulted in a smaller 4.1% traffic drop. The same season’s finale on 26 June 2016 resulted in the biggest Game of Thrones-related drop so far of 5.2%.
S07E01, ‘Dragonstone’, shattered ‘GoT’ ratings records on Sunday night. 16.1 million HBO subscribers watched it, 10.1 million of those viewing traditionally and the rest coming from DVR and streaming.
It was the most-tweeted-about episode in the show’s history, attracting 2.4 million tweets, a high proportion of which were about Arya Stark’s dramatic cold open scene and Ed Sheeran’s controversial cameo.
[via Mashable, opening image via HBO]