HBO isn’t a philanthropy. They don’t greenlight 7th and 8th seasons for shows that are losing money. There would be no reason for them to do so, so barring some massive loss in audience (and even then, most of the advertising for the show is pre-sold), we can all rest assured that they are not losing money on Game of Thrones.
EDIT - they also greenlit pilots for a bunch of Game of Thrones spinoff series, further illustrating that the franchise is a cash cow for them.
yes.
https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSBRE98J0W020130920
That article is from four years ago. The show was big then, but it’s absolutely huge now.
Emilia found a fourth dragon.
Which lead to someone green-screening this, of course…
And now the gifs will follow.
But there’s no revenue numbers in there, just an array of products. I’m skeptical that all the merch sales combined make up a meaningful proportion of HBO’s $6bn annual revenue (which, incidentally, is less than Marvel makes on licensing alone). Subs alone make up 85%, and then you have overseas TV licensing and DVD sales. I mean, I don’t doubt that they offer a lot of merch of various kinds and that it helps defray the cost of the show. But I almost never see it, and most of the stuff in that article isn’t exactly mass market. In contrast, you see Minions and Star Wars and even Doctor Who shit everywhere. Marvel movies make multiples of their budget back in merch.
Point being, we’re talking about mid-large movie level budgets for a season, and while I may be wrong, I’m not seeing evidence that they’re selling the volume of merch an average Marvel movie might. More than your typical TV show, sure, but it’s enormously more expensive than your typical TV show.
They don’t break out numbers, but there are other articles out there that call out GOT when discussing overall movie and TV merchandising revenue. And you don’t put hundreds of items in our store if they’re not selling.
An article from 2012 stated that GOT merchandising sales were growing five times faster than I’m 2011 for the HBO shop in Europe.
Is it going to be as merchandise-heavy as a Star Wars or Pixar movie? Probably not. But for TV it’s huge. And it’s all essentially gravy for HBO.
Other than maybe Big Bang Show shirts I actually can’t think of another TV show with merchandise.
And I would love a Tyrion bobble head doll.
The Simpsons had a crapton of merch in the 90s and 2000s and probably still does. Family Guy did for a while. Nearly every kids show does (I mean, half the reason they exist is to sell merch). Star Trek has loads. Doctor Who has tons (there’s an entire store on the Strand in London).
I remember seeing those at a Barnes and Noble last year.
:)
I forgot about Dr. Who, I have seen lots of that stuff. And I don’t count kids shows because that is the reason they exist.
This show is paying for itself many times over.
Dragon ex machina.
Begun, the Dragon Wars have
FFFUUUU…
I mean, we knew it was coming, it was the obvious path, but still…
FFFUUUU…
I’ll be very disappointed in the internet if someone doesn’t do the calculation for how fast a messenger raven could reasonably be expected to fly from Eastwatch to Dragonstone.
So… the Tormund/Hound dialogue we got in this ep. That was pretty great hey!
Well, the undead dragon showed one episode earlier than I predicted, the shame :(
Warp ravens or impulse ravens?
Where did they get all that chain?
