Data published by piracy monitoring firm MUSO suggests that the season opener of Game of Thrones was
Pirated 54 million times in the first 24 hours.
Unauthorized streaming services were most used, while torrent downloads were good for roughly ten percent of the total.
Most pirates come from India, followed by China and the United States.
Last Sunday, the long-awaited final season of the hit series Game of Thrones aired in dozens of countries worldwide.
The show has broken several piracy records over the years and thus far this week, there has been another
piracy bonanza.
As usual, the torrent download figures quickly ran into the millions. However, little is known about the traffic that goes
to web-based streaming portals, which have outgrown traditional file-sharing sites in recent years.
One of the main problems is that it’s impossible for outsiders to know exactly how many visitors pirate streaming services get.
Traffic data for these sites are not public, which makes it difficult to put an exact figure on the number of views one particular video has.
Piracy monitoring firm
MUSO hasn’t shied away from this unexplored territory though and has now released some hard numbers.
According to MUSO, the premiere episode of the seventh season of Game of Thrones
has been pirated more than 54 million times during the first day alone. This massive number is largely driven by streaming websites.
For comparison, HBO’s official, or legitimate, viewing numbers add up to just 17.4 million.
The data reveals that online streaming sites accounted for 76.6% of all pirate views,
followed by web downloads at 12.2%. Public torrent sites were good for another 10.8% and private torrent sites close the row with 0.5%.
MUSO’s finding are partly based on data from SimilarWeb, which uses a sample of roughly 200 million ‘devices’ to estimate
website traffic. Website visits are then seen as “downloads or view,” and the sample data is extrapolated into the totals.
Whether people actually saw the full episode is unknown.
https://torrentfreak.com/game-of-thrones-season-premiere-pirated-54-million-times-in-a-day-190417/
