Game of Thrones is back for its final season, and there’s no doubt that the “tits and dragons” fantasy epic continues to be a hit. The season 8 premiere was watched by 17.4 million viewers across all of HBO’s platforms. But that number was nothing compared to the illegal viewings.
According to an analytics firm MUSO, the first episode of Game of Thrones season 8 totaled 55 million pirated views including illegal streams, downloads, and torrents in the first 24 hours. Even with an IP as hot as GoT, most people would rather pay the iron price and pirate than pay for HBO. Also this is attributed to the fact that unlike services like Netflix which are global, HBO is limited to first world countries.
MUSO breaks down the 55 million number thusly: the overwhelming majority (76.6 percent) came from unofficial streams of the episode, with web downloads totaling 12.2 percent of views, public torrents accounting for 10.8 percent, and private torrents comprising a measly 0.5 percent.
HBO can still tout record-breaking ratings even if the majority of Game of Thrones fans aren’t paying a cent to watch. One has to wonder about the quality of many of the pirated streams, too, although you can’t beat the value.
