Last weekend saw a new HBO Max horse enter the race: FBoy Island, a new reality dating show with an admittedly not-terrible hook: Three women, hoping for romance, not hook-ups, are given a whopping 24 men with whom to flirt and, maybe, find true love. But half of them are actually nice guys, hoping for real commitment, while the other dozen…are not. How will they know which is which? It’s a question a lot of people wanted answered, at least according to HBO Max.
HBO claims that #FBOYISLAND "had the biggest premiere weekend for a Max Original reality series" since #HBOMax launched. As always, they did not provide any specific viewership data.
— Brandon Katz (@Great_Katzby) August 3, 2021
The streamer claimed that not only did a lot of people watch the first three episodes of FBoy Island, but that it had, they claimed, “the biggest premiere weekend for a Max Original reality series.” Hooray! If anyone’s more deserving of success, it’s FBoys.
A couple caveats, though. For one, this only applies to HBO Max Original reality series, which is a pretty specific record to hold, especially since the service is only a year-and-change old.
For another, this is only according to HBO Max. Like most streamers, they don’t offer any real numbers, and there is no independent organization, like the Nielsens, that can verify their claims. The streaming world is still a wild west in terms of stats, and so the only response to hearing a joint like HBO Max — or especially Netflix, which only reports on viewership when they have a big (alleged) hit — claim they had huge numbers is to say: If y’all say so.
