For the first time in the show’s run, an episode of Game of Thrones cracked the 10 million live viewers barrier. Actually, it wasn’t just one episode in season seven; it was five, including a remarkable 12.1 million for the finale. Now imagine how much higher the ratings would have been if everyone who illegally downloaded an episode watched it on HBO. Over 90 million people reportedly relied on torrents to watch the season premiere, and according to Torrent Freak, the numbers only get more staggering from there.
While it’s hard to measure piracy accurately, streaming in particular, piracy tracking outfit MUSO has just released some staggering numbers. According to the company, the latest season was pirated more than a billion times in total. To put this into perspective, this means that on average each episode was pirated 140 million times, compared to 32 million views through legal channels. The vast majority of the pirate “views” came from streaming services (85%), followed by torrents (9%), and direct downloads (6%). (Via)
Even now, over a week after the finale, nine of the 15 most popular torrents on The Pirate Bay are from Game of Thrones (Suits is another piracy favorite, apparently). There’s no easy way for HBO to stem the tide of pirates, who I imagine all look like Euron Greyjoy. Would you want to deal with this?
I’ll pay the $16 a month, thank you very much.
(Via Torrent Freak)
