From the Book of Ra to Dragonstone there is an app available on the Google Play Store for you. The latter of course refers to Game of Thrones and while there are plenty of Game of Thrones apps available on the Google Play Store, right now there seems to be only one that actually matters – HBO NOW. Games of thrones Season 7 premiered on July 16 and according to data from App Annie, the latest GoT season has had a serious effect on HBO. In spite of only two episodes having been aired so far.
An effect which seemingly was irrelevant of operating system as App Annie notes that downloads for the HBO NOW app was as impressive on both the Google Play Store and Apple’s App Store. So much so that the app has literally flown up the charts over the past two weeks. To put this into perspective, and for reference these figures are only relevant to the Google Play Store (as the figures increase even more when factoring in iOS), but as of July 1 App Annie had HBO NOW ranked at 316 on the US Google Play Store. In addition to being ranked at 178 when looking specifically at non-game applications and ranked 22 when filtering further down to just entertainment apps. By July 18 however, (two days after the first episode of the latest GoT series) HBO NOW had become the number 1 entertainment app on the US Google Play Store. What’s more, by July 18 it was also ranked fifth for non-game applications, and even more impressive, ranked fifth on the Google Play Store overall – which takes into consideration gaming apps as well.
A point to note is that this was not just a trend reserved for HBO NOW. As HBO GO (HBO’s app for those with an active HBO cable subscription) also followed along the same lines, albeit not to the same degree. On June 30, HBO GO was ranked 56 in entertainment, 405 in applications, and did not even register on the overall list. However, by July 18 not only had HBO GO risen to 7 in entertainment, but also 42 in non-gaming apps, and 59 overall. A knock-on effect of this was that other forms of the same app also rose sharply. Take for instance the HBO GO Android TV app which was ranked 128 on July 1 in the ‘Video Players & Editors’ category on Google Play. By July 18 however, the same app was ranked 27 in the same category. Figures which suggest that the effect of Game of Thrones has been massive across the board on HBO’s app portfolio and this is of course, without even focusing on the increases in revenue from such changes in ranking.