Despite recent reports showing significant increases in consumer cord-cutting, you wouldn’t know it by the ratings HBO Canada got for its Game of Thrones premiere on Sunday night.

Overnight ratings for the pay TV network showed 1.3 million viewers on Sunday night for the fantasy epic’s fifth season bow

Comparing that to conventional networks, Madam Secretary on Global TV had 1.3 million viewers on Sunday March 29 at 8 p.m., as did Murdoch Mysteries on CBC. CTV’s MasterChef Canada at 7 p.m. that night had 1.6 million viewers (all ratings final, via Numeris).

Game of Thrones, which aired at 9 p.m., drew the highest ratings ever for a season premiere on HBO Canada, breaking the record set by the show’s season four opener last year.

The overnight numbers represented a 19% increase over the previous year.

Winning its timeslot, it was also the second-most-watched in Canada for the night, according to HBO Canada, which is a multiplex channel of Bell Media’s The Movie Network in Eastern Canada and Corus Entertainment’s Movie Central in Western Canada.