Euphoria wrapped its second season with record-breaking first-night viewers — enabling the premium cable network to achieve levels of viewership not seen since Game of Thrones came to an end in 2019.
According to HBO, Sunday’s second season finale drew 6.6 million viewers across all platforms. That surpassed the viewership by more than five times for the season one finale in August 2019 and it was the biggest night one tune-in Euphoria has ever obtained.
Euphoria averaged 16.3 million viewers from the season launch on Jan. 9 until Sunday. That’s more than twice its season one average and more than any other HBO series — apart from Game of Thrones — since 2004 when Nielsen altered how the premium cabler’s viewership was calculated. (At its height in the early 2000s, The Sopranos averaged more than 10 million first-night viewers each episode; HBO, of course, did not have streaming choices at the time.) According to HBO, the season two premiere has outperformed 19 million viewers across all platforms.
Almost every viewer of Euphoria has accessed the show on HBO Max or other digital services. According to Nielsen’s on-air numbers, the program averaged just 300,000 viewers throughout the seven episodes preceding the finale — suggesting that just around 2% of its viewership turned in to watch the linear HBO channel on Sunday nights at 9 p.m.
HBO’s Euphoria has already returned for a third season, with a release date to be set.
