Despite electric performances from Kendrick Lamar, Ed Sheeran and Lil Uzi Vert, the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards suffered a huge drop in ratings when it aired this past Sunday (Aug. 27). According to The Washington Post, the network drew just 5.4 million viewers, the lowest total since Nielsen began tracking viewers for the show back in 1994.

MTV can take some consolation in the fact that it aired the same night as the season finale for the wildly popular HBO series Game of Thrones, which drew in 12.07 million viewers on Sunday night.

This year's viewership was a steep drop from the 6.5 million viewers that tuned in to the 2016 VMAs, the 9.8 million that tuned in to the 2015 and the 10.3 million people that watched in 2014. Needless to say, that's a pretty consistent pattern of drop-offs in viewership.

While this does, at the first couple of glances, appear to be a very troubling sign for MTV, The Washington Post points out a couple factors that could have precipitated a drop in viewership. On one hand, there's the aforementioned Game of Thrones season finale. Then, of course, there's the matter of streaming, which, according to Rolling Stone, has recently seen a massive surge. Back in 2016, the VMAs were streamed 45.8 million times on Facebook, up from 4.4 million streams in 2015. Crazy stuff.

The VMAs won Sunday night with teens, though. Nielsen ratings indicate that more teens tuned into this year's VMAs than Game of Thrones.

See Kendrick Lamar, Lil Uzi Vert and More Hit the Red Carpet at 2017 MTV Video Music Awards

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