The overnight UK broadcast of the final episode of Game of Thrones averaged 3.2 million viewers, according to the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board. Another 527,000 caught up with the repeat on Monday evening.

The show averaged 73% of the TV-watching audience during its broadcast on Sky Atlantic from 2am on Monday.

Data from the TV ratings system Overnights suggests 51% of adult viewers were male and 68% were in the ABC1 socio-economic groups.

For the repeat at 9pm on Monday, viewers from the west Midlands made up 19% of the audience, and the south-west accounted for 2.3%.

The programme has been a ratings success for HBO in the US and Sky in the UK. Sky’s paid-for streaming service Now TV has signed up about 1.6 million households, compared with Netflix’s 12.3 million in the UK.

The show’s last episode received largely positive reviews, but the response to the final series overall was more mixed. More than a million fans signed a petition criticising rushed plots and inconsistencies and demanding HBO remake the eighth season “with competent writers”.