The premiere of The Curse of Oak Island Season 5 was watched by a record number of viewers, official figures have revealed.
More people tuned in to watch the season opener than in any previous premiere since the show began back in 2014.
Nielsen stats show 2.95million viewers saw the two-hour premiere, which included a poignant tribute to long-time cast member Craig Tester’s son Drake following his death earlier this year.
That was a big increase on the figure for Season 4, which saw 2.62 million people tune in for the premiere.
The first three seasons were also lower, with 2.26million tuning in for the first episode of Season 3, 2.6million for the Season 2 premiere, and 2.53 for the first ever episode back in Season 1.
The viewing figures are likely to rise significantly during the season ahead, as surprisingly the premiere is generally one of the episodes with the lowest number of people watching.
The figure generally increases as seasons progress, sometimes peaking for particular episodes when there are significant finds. The episode with the highest ever number of viewers was last year’s Season 4 finale, which 3.79 people tuned in to watch.
The above figures also only relate to people who watched the episode live — and the actual total number of viewers is a lot higher when you include people watching it on demand.
Last season an average of 5.4 million viewers watched each episode across all platforms.
As well as paying an emotional tribute to Craig Tester’s son Drake, the Season 5 premiere included several significant finds — with the most significant likely to be a rose-headed nail uncovered from the spoils of the GAL-1 shaft the team dug last season.
In case you missed it, make sure to check out our recap of the premiere where we look at the 10 most important things we learned.
Episode 2, which airs this week, sees the team investigating a treasure chest from the 1700s which adds to evidence that pirates were active on Oak Island, meanwhile Rick and Marty get positive news about one of the finds from the premiere.
The Curse of Oak Island airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on History.