Jeff Daly/HBO
The news comes two episodes into season two of the football drama.
Ballers is staying in the game.
HBO has renewed the football comedy starring Dwayne Johnson for a third season, the star announced Thursday on social media.
Shortly thereafter, HBO confirmed the pickup, which comes just two episodes into the second season.
“Dwayne Johnson, Stephen Levinson, Mark Wahlberg and the rest of the Ballers team have once again delivered a winner for our viewers,” HBO programming president Casey Bloys said. “We look forward to another great season of Ballers next year.”
In addition to headlining the series, Johnson exec produces with creator Stephen Levinson as well as Mark Wahlberg, Dany Garcia, Peter Berg, Evan Reilly, Rob Weiss, Julian Farin and Denis Biggs.
Ballers' renewal is little surprise given the football series' impressive ratings. The show averaged 9.1 million viewers across platforms in season one, making it HBO's most-watched half-hour comedy in six years. The season two premiere has grabbed 5.7 million viewers so far, according to HBO.
Ballers has become an important part of HBO's original comedy slate alongside critical darlings such as Veep, Silicon Valley and Girls, which is gearing up for its final season. HBO also recently launched the Danny McBride comedy Vice Principals, which the star has said will only run for two seasons.
On the drama side, HBO has had more trouble with the recent cancellation of Vinyl, the upcoming third and final season of The Leftovers and with no season three of True Detective on the horizon. However, the pay cabler has enjoyed recent buzz with the limited drama The Night Of.
HBO is gearing up for several series launches this fall with the comedies Divorce, Insecure and High Maintenance as well as the ambitious sci-fi drama Westworld.
Johnson, an ex-football player just like his Ballers character, has been ramping his TV slate as of late. The actor is developing 1980s-set bodybuilding drama titled Muscle Beach at USA Network. That and Ballers come on top of his busy film career, which includes the upcoming Baywatch movie and the next Fast and the Furious sequel, among others.
Ballers HBO
