Game of Thrones Season 6 premiere crushes Aussie subscription TV records

THE season six premiere of Game of Thrones has obliterated Aussie subscription television records. And the episode is likely to push past one million viewers.

Melisandre Game Of Thrones. Picture: HBO via Foxtel

THE season six premiere of Game of Thrones has smashed Aussie subscription television records.

Yesterday’s episode was seen by a massive 727,000 viewers across the country — a huge 31 per cent jump from season five’s 553,000.

“This marks the most watched series premiere in Australian subscription television history,” a Foxtel spokesman said.

The cumulative viewing figure looks set to top one million viewers once all viewing across the week is calculated.

Last year, Game of Thrones had a cumulative audience of 900,000 per episode.

While Australians were also reportedly leading the list for illegal downloading of The Red Woman episode, this landmark figure means the number of people who legally watched the series on Foxtel far outweighed those who took the illegal route.

Yara Greyjoy (Gemma Whelan) in a scene from Game Of Thrones. Picture: HBO

TorrentFreak reports that more than 1 million people worldwide had illegally downloaded the episode within 24 hours of its telecast.

Aussies made up 12.5 per cent of those downloads. India had 9.7 per cent, the USA 8.5 per cent and the UK 6.9 per cent.

Fans around the world had been waiting more than 10 months for the new series.

They learned that Jon Snow (Kit Harington) is apparently dead after being stabbed in the season five finale. His bloodied corpse was found in the snow by Ser Davos (Liam Cunningham).

The episode also saw the brutal murder of Prince Doran Martell (Alexander Siddig) and his son at the hands of Ellaria Sand and her daughters, the Sand Snakes.

At episode’s end Red Priestess Melisandre (Carice van Houten), who many had hoped would bring Snow back to life, mysteriously transformed from a young beauty into an old crone.

The opening episode of Game of Thrones Season 6 — starring Alfie Allen and Sophie Turner — looks set to top one million Aussie viewers.

The sprawling episode juggled a number of other plot strands including a reunion between and Brienne of Tarth (Gwendoline Christie) and Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner), who alongside Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) had survived her leap from the walls of Winterfell to escape from their sadistic captor, Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon).

Elsewhere, blinded Arya Stark’s (Maisie Williams) assassin training took a brutal new direction and Daenerys Targaryen (Emelia Clarke) found her way back to her old life as queen blocked by the laws of the Dothraki horse people who had captured her.