The much-anticipated premiere of Game of Thrones wasn”t just a boon for HBO. The return of Daenerys Targaryen and Tyrion Lannister proved to be equally popular in the world of video piracy.
The website TorrentFreak.com is reporting that the first episode of the sixth season has been downloaded more than 1 million times already via BitTorrent. According to the site, the downloading is most popular in Australia, India, United States and the U.K. – accounting for more than 35 percent of all downloads.
Game of Thrones has held the less-than-desirable title of “Most Pirated TV Show” every year since 2012. The 2015 season finale was illegally downloaded more than 14 million times. This certainly can”t make HBO happy considering average episodes draw between 6 million and 8 million viewers.
It”s likely that the total number of downloads and sharing is well in excess of the 1 million amount, as the data is only based on BitTorrent and doesn”t take other file swapping sites and tools into account.