'Game of Thrones' kickoff for final season attracts record 17.4 watches

Some 17.4 million Americans watched the first episode of the final season of television’s “Game of Thrones” - a record audience for the medieval fantasy series, Reuters reports, citing cable channel HBO.

HBO said Sunday’s live US television audience and viewers on its HBO GO and HBO NOW apps exceeded the previous series high of 16.9 million viewers for the Season 7 finale two years ago.

On social media, Sunday’s premiere was also the most-tweeted-about episode of the show ever, with more than 5 million Tweets, and 11 million mentions throughout the course of the weekend, HBO said in a statement.

All of the top 10 global Twitter trends late Sunday evening were about the episode.