Game of Thrones was the most pirated TV show of 2015, and this has reported by TorrentFreak, with the fantasy drama’s season 5 finale downloaded an estimated 14.4 million times via BitTorrent. In second place was — The Walking Dead, which was downloaded 6.9 million times — to earn the dubious accolade for the fourth year in a row. Game of Thrones season 5 has now been downloaded twice as much than were estimated to have watched it on TV at the time. HBO’s show has always drawn particular interest from pirates, heightened further this year, it should be recalled that four episodes leaked before the season 5 premiere.
But while TorrentFreak notes that Game of Thrones‘ finale got an estimated TV viewership of 8.11 million, that figure doesn’t take into account other methods of watching the episode legally. Its obvious most of this pirating comes from countries where HBO doesn’t exist.
While TorrentFreak says TV piracy is rising, most of the other shows on its top 10 list still notched more estimated TV viewers than pirates. The most torrented episode of The Big Bang Theory, for example, was downloaded 4.4 million times — a fraction of the show’s 18.3 million-strong viewership. Similarly, The Walking Dead‘s most torrented episode took second place on 2015’s top 10, but the 6.9 million total was less than half of the 15.78 million that watched the episode on TV.
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