author: Frozen
Premiere Episode of the Game of Thrones S08 Keenly Pirated
The Game of Thrones is very popular among those, who prefer illegal streaming. A survey shows the number of illegal viewings of the final season's first episode.
According to Muso, a company specializing in the analysis of digital piracy, the first episode of the final season of the Game of Thrones was viewed 54 million times within 24 hours after its release. The vast majority of this result (76.6%) was generated by people watching illegal streams, 12.2% downloaded the series from file-hosting websites, and the rest chose the P2P network of the BitTorrent type.
Geographically, the largest percentage of pirates came from India (9.5 million viewers). The second place was taken by China (5.2 million people) and the podium was closed by the United States (less than 4 million viewers). The first two countries are quite easy to explain: the people of India have difficulty accessing the series, and in China, a censored version of the episode has been broadcast (six minutes shorter). A part of the audience preferred to see an uncut version of the work – for such people, piracy was the only viable option. The case of the USA is more ambiguous, since HBO is easily accessible there.
The piracy of the Game of Thrones is nothing new. The final of the seventh season was illegally downloaded 120 million times within 72 hours of its release, and almost all previous episodes of the series won infamous first place on the pirate charts right after their release. In 2013, Jeff Bewkes, then CEO of Time Warner (owner of HBO), admitted that the title of the most pirated series in the world meant more to him than an Emmy Award. Even though the company claims to have accepted this state of affairs, in 2017, it openly entered a war path against the pirates.
The Game of Thrones can be legally viewed on HBO and HBO Go. New episodes are released on Sundays at 8:00 p.m. Central