Spartacus: Vengeance Premiere Doubles Numbers of Series Premiere

After being off the air for nearly two years (if you don’t count the six episode prequel) Spartacus roared back to the the small screen on Friday night.

With Liam McIntyre taking over for the late Andy Whitfield, the first episode of Spartacus: Vengeance drew a 0.6 rating in the 18-49 demographic and 1.39 million viewers at 10pm.

That was double what the series premiere drew back in 2010 (a 0.3 rating with 0.66 million). If Starz had any doubts about their decision to continue with the series, those fears have now been put to rest.

Here’s the press release from Starz, which incorporates replay numbers:

Starz “Spartacus: Vengeance” Returns with 2.7 Million Overall Weekend Viewers
4 Million+ Total Viewers To-Date with Record Online and On-Demand Sampling

The first episode of “Spartacus: Vengeance” debuted on STARZ to an audience of nearly 2.7 million P2+ viewers across four weekend telecasts the weekend of January 27. (**Late reporting of an additional Sunday night airing was not available at time of release).

Focusing specifically on Friday night performance, “Spartacus: Vengeance” produced a record total of 2.1 million viewers (1.39M viewers for Friday at 10PM (et/pt) and 677K for the 11PM (et/pt) repeat, which was a 10% increase over the “Spartacus: Gods of the Arena” prequel Friday night premiere (1.9 million viewers combined for Friday premiere 10PM and 11PM repeat).

Record multi-platform sampling interest in the first episode of “Spartacus: Vengeance” achieved more than 1.4 million on-demand and online views to-date, bringing the preliminary weekend total past the 4 million viewer mark.

* Source: Nielsen Fast National Ratings

What do you think? Did you watch the Spartacus: Vengeance premiere? What do you think of Liam McIntyre in the lead role?