How Does Game of Thrones Make Its Money?

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Game of Thrones is a monster hit for HBO, bringing in over eight million viewers a weekend these days as it continues to break its own records week after week. The series has been renewed for the next two years, and will likely exist until all of George RR Martin’s books (even the unwritten ones) are covered.

But as Game of Thrones airs on HBO, commercial free, it has a revenue model that works differently than most advertising-based TV shows. With a pretty massive budget, how does HBO make money via the show?

Selling a Channel

While Game of Thrones doesn’t sell products during its commercial breaks, its very existence serves to sell HBO itself, a pay channel. For decades now, consumers have been charged extra to access HBO. Some lucky ones get it for free in their cable package (like me), but others pay anywhere from $5 to $15 a month for the channel.

Game of Thrones is a sort of “channel seller” for HBO. Pay channels need them in order to get subscribers. It’s why I still have Showtime, as I just wanted to see the Dexter finale, but didn’t care about anything else on the channel afterward. Now, my sheer laziness has let me keep subscribing even though I don’t need it. Good enough shows can get you hooked on a pay channel in that fashion.

This is exactly what HBO does. Many consumers will subscribe to the channel just for HBO, but then they’ll let their subscription continue on anyway after it’s done because they don’t want to/forget to cancel. And at $5/$15 per household, that can add up to quite a bit of money indeed. HBO has 29.2 million subscribers, and in the age of Game of Thrones, has seen that number rise even as it faces off with services like Netflix.

After the Fact

Even though DVDs are becoming less and less used these days, those who don’t want to subscribe to HBO can catch up with Game of Thrones through Blu-ray season sets. Normal packs with run about $55 a season, with special editions reaching a $100 or more.

Naturally, in this day and age seasons are also available in online stores like iTunes. You can get a full season there for a bit cheaper at $39, though you lose whatever benefits you may get from discs. Episodes are $4 each if you buy them individually. Sales data isn’t released on either DVDs or digital downloads, but it’s likely to be substantial.

The problem with these two distribution methods is that it takes a long, long time for new seasons of Game of Thrones to reach them. That means a lot of waiting where you can encounter possible spoilers, and pirates who don’t download episodes as they air may be tempted to download giant season chunks instead.

Right now HBO doesn’t offer a quick way to buy new episodes because they want to keep their subscriber base up, but they have been experimenting with offering HBO Go as a standalone service that doesn’t need a cable package attached to it.

Mass Merchandizing

No, we’re not exactly seeing licensed Game of Thrones toilet seat covers or breakfast cereal right now, as the series hasn’t gone “full Star Wars” on us, but there’s a fairly large arm of the series that uses merchandizing nonetheless.

There are currently almost 400 Game of Thrones-related items to buy in HBO’s store, including t-shirts, dragon egg paperweights, pint glasses and more. There are certainly even more licensed products outside that specific storefront as well.

Right now in terms of media, Game of Thrones exists as a TV show and a book series, but there was also an RPG video game made in 2013, and another one coming either this year or the next from hit-maker Telltale games. These licensed games can turn into big hits for the franchise, provided they’re of high enough quality. The same goes for any potential films or spin-off series.

Game of Thrones has many revenue streams to support its massive costs, and it manages to make a good bit of money for HBO as well. Expect to see it last the better part of a decade before it takes a bow.

[Photo via HBO]

Written by Paul

Paul lives in New York with his beautiful and supportive wife. He writes for Forbes and his work also appears on IGN, The Daily Dot, Unreality Magazine, TVOvermind and more. It's a slow day if he's written less than 10,000 words.