Which Fantasy Spinoff will dominate the Fall: House of the Dragon (HBO Max) or The Rings of Power (Amazon Prime Video)

TL; DR 
  • On YouTube, The Rings of Power trailer has outperformed House of the Dragon across all major metrics: earning 78% more Emotional Reactions, 53% more Total Comments, and a 7% higher Reaction Rate
  • However, on Twitter, House of the Dragon earned higher rates of Emotional Reaction (+53% compared to The Rings of Power) and Total Tweets (+61% compared to The Rings of Power) despite its trailer underperforming on YouTube
  • House of the Dragon has 15% higher rates of positive emotions such as Love, Enjoy, and Excited, while The Rings of Power earned 6% higher rates of negative emotions such as Hate and Dislike, indicating that House of the Dragon may outperform The Rings of Power this fall

In the coming weeks, two of the most iconic fantasy franchises will be releasing spinoff series on streaming platforms: Game of Thrones is releasing House of the Dragon on HBO Max, while Lord of the Rings is releasing The Rings of Power on Amazon Prime Video. With both series releasing shortly, we take a look at the preliminary results of the trailer releases, explore how the programs are already being discussed on Twitter, and see which series the fans are anticipating more.

Cumulative YouTube Emotional Reactions | Days Since YouTube Trailer Release
Source: Canvs Compare, First 26 days of trailer release on YouTube Read As: In its first 26 days live on YouTube, The Rings of Power Trailer was able to garner over 11K Emotional Reactions, while House of the Dragon has garnered over 6K Emotional Reactions
So far, The Rings of Power Trailer on YouTube is heavily outpacing the House of the Dragon Trailer in both Emotional Reactions, Total Tweets, and Reaction Rate

The Rings of Power Trailer on YouTube is handly outpacing the House of the Dragon trailer earning 78% more Emotional Reactions, 53% more Total Comments, and a 7% higher Reaction Rate. This indicates that fans are not just engaging more with The Rings of Power Trailer on YouTube, but are showing significantly more passion behind their comments.

House of the Dragon vs. The Rings of Power YouTube Trailer | Topline Metrics
Source: Canvs Compare, First 26 days of trailer release on YouTube Read As: The Rings of Power Trailer has been able to heavily outperform House of the Dragon Trailer across all major metrics within its first 3 weeks live on YouTube

As observed in the above graphs, the gap in YouTube trailer performance between The Rings of Power and House of the Dragon continues to widen as time goes on. It’s safe to assume that The Rings of Power will garner much more attention on YouTube. However, let’s take a look at how the YouTube trailer performance has impacted conversation on another platform: Twitter.

While The Rings of Power won the battle of conversation on initial YouTube Trailers, House of the Dragon has dominated the conversation on Twitter

The trailer releases of both new series lead to a massive spike in conversation on Twitter, generating over 175K Total Tweets for House of the Dragon on the same day as its YouTube trailer release, and over 106K Total Tweets for The Rings of Power on the same day as its YouTube trailer release.

  • Despite the House of the Dragon trailer earning significantly less Emotional Reactions on its YouTube trailer, on Twitter the program heavily outperformed The Rings of Power, and continues to widen its gap in both Emotional Reactions and Total Tweets earned on the platform
  • Currently House of the Dragon is earning 53% more Emotional Reactions and 61% more Total Tweets on Twitter compared to The Rings of Power, indicating fans of House of the Dragon have used Twitter as their preferred platform to discuss the upcoming series
Cumulative Twitter Emotional Reactions
Source: Canvs Compare, May 27, 2022 – May 29, 2022 Read As: The character Steve Harrington was not only able to drive the highest levels of overall Emotional Reactions, but was also able to generate the highest levels of positive feedback compared to other character drivers in the first three days of Stranger Things being live on Netflix

Across both YouTube and Twitter, there has been significantly more conversation for House of the Dragon compared to The Rings of Power, with both series’ YouTube trailers leading to massive spikes in volume on Twitter. Let’s dive into the emotions behind the comments across both platforms to see how fans are responding to these sneak peeks.

Emotions vary heavily between House of the Dragon fans and The Rings of Power fans across both Twitter and YouTube

When diving into the specific emotions behind both of the programs on YouTube and Twitter, it is clear that there is a negative skew to the comments behind The Rings of Power. The Rings of Power generated 6% higher rates of negative Emotional Reactions Hate and Dislike when compared to House of the Dragon.

We also found that House of the Dragon earned overwhelmingly positive feedback across both platforms, with over two-thirds of all conversations attributed to the positive emotions of Love, Enjoy, and Excited. This is over 15% higher than the positive emotions The Rings of Power earned.

House of the Dragon Verbatims:

  • Love: “I can’t wait for this new Game of Thrones spin off, 🥰
  • Enjoy: “IM GONNA CRY THE NEW HOUSE OF THE DRAGON TRAILER LOOKS GOOD”
  • Excited: “DIDNT REALISE HOW CLOSE HOUSE OF THE DRAGON RELEASES I AM HYPED”

The Rings of Power Verbatims:

  • Excited: “@LOTRonPrime Words cannot describe how infinitely excited I am for this.”
  • Hate: “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power about to be the biggest tv flop of all time.”
  • Dislike: “@LOTRonPrime @PrimeVideo No thanks, I will rewatch the Lord of the Rings movies”

Based on the preliminary conversation around both of the programs across YouTube and Twitter, we anticipate House of the Dragon to outperform The Rings of Power in both overall conversation and in driving positive responses from the fan bases. We will follow up this analysis after both programs have been released to see how fans are reacting once episodes start to drop!

Feel free to explore the shifts in emotions below:

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