HBO is definitely pleased with the performance of Game of Thrones , seeing as the series currently has a 25-percent viewership bump season-over-season. But Game of Thrones isn't just doing well on the pay cable network, it's become one of the most-watched shows on TV.

Loading

According to The Hollywood Reporter , the fourth season of Game of Thrones is averaging 18 million viewers per week, which includes first-runs, encores, HBO GO and On-Demand views. That puts Game of Thrones within striking distance of cable's most-watched series, The Walking Dead, which averaged 18.4 million viewers in its latest season.Growing each season, Game of Thrones is now the biggest hit for HBO since The Sopranos, coming close to the crime drama's 18.2 million mark set during that show's fourth season and is now even rivaling popular series on the Big Four networks, topping The Blacklist, The Voice, Dancing With the Stars and American Idol. As THR notes, only three series ended with an average of over 18 million viewers in the just-ended network TV season, as measured by live-plus-7 data (how many people watch a series within seven days of its original airing): Sunday Night Football, NCIS and The Big Bang Theory - Big Bang with a huge 23.1 million viewers a week.With viewership steadily increasing for Game of Thrones, the question is how high will the number grow as the show continues. And could HBO have the biggest show on TV come next season?

Evan Campbell is a freelance news writer who streams games on his Twitch channel , talks about Nintendo weekly on the NF Show , and chats about movies and TV series on Twitter