The show has been illegally watched more than one billion times, no thanks to the leaks of some of the episodes.
- September 8, 2017
AceShowbiz -
"Game of Thrones" is not only ruling broadcast ratings, but also online streams. While it's no longer surprise that the show keeps outdoing itself by setting new record for piracy, this year's number passes a billion mark.
TorrentFreak, citing piracy monitoring firm MUSO, reports that the seventh season of HBO hit series has been illegally downloaded 1.03 billion times, or roughly 140 million times per episode. By comparison, HBO has reported that an average of 32 million viewers has watched each episode for season 7 so far via legal viewing.
The vast majority of the pirate 'views' came from streaming services (85 percent), followed by torrents (9 percent) and direct downloads (6 percent). The staggering number of piracy is likely boosted by the leaks of several episodes of the show's seventh season prior to the broadcast on HBO.
HBO has been rocked by a major hack as hackers claimed to have obtained 1.5 terabytes of data from the company. The hackers demanded a multimillion-dollar ransom and has threatened to dump more information from the stolen data and videos of future shows online.
However, the leaks of "Game of Thrones" episodes were not the result of the hack, but from the breach from HBO's overseas operations. In one case, four people in India have been arrested in connection with the leak of the fourth episode. Police said the theft was committed by current and former employees of Prime Focus Technologies, the data-management company hired by Sky India.
The sixth season, meanwhile, was accidentally posted by HBO's European and Spain divisions onto their on-demand subscribers, four days ahead of schedule.
The leak, unfortunately, didn't hurt the ratings of the HBO broadcast as the season finale set a new record as the most-watched episode ever. It brought in 12.1 million viewers during its Sunday, August 27, 9 P.M. airing.
