Game of Thrones season 7 set ratings records for HBO. The final episode, “The Dragon and the Wolf,” was watched live by 12.07 million people. That represents the highest ratings for an episode of the show ever. And that number only increases when you add in delayed viewings. All in all, each episode of the show was legally watched around 32 million times.
But as good as ratings were this year, many, many more people were watching the show illegally, according to new figures released by piracy monitoring firm MUSO and reported by Torrentfreak. According to these figures, episode of the season were pirated just over a billion times, with a ‘B’.
Here’s how the figures broke down:
- “Dragonstone”: 187,427,575
- “Stormborn”: 123,901,209
- “The Queen’s Justice”: 116,027,851
- “The Spoils of War”: 121,719,868
- “Eastwatch”: 151,569,560
- “Beyond the Wall”: 184,913,279
- “The Dragon and the Wolf”: 143,393,804
- All-Episode Bundles: 834,522
That’s a total of 1,029,787,668 illegal viewings of episodes of season 7, which is…which is a lot.
The great majority of those viewings — 84.7% — came from streaming services. Torrents accounted for 9.1%, direct downloads for 5.6%, and private torrents for .6%.
MUSO CEO and Co-Founder Andy Chatterley notes that a series of leaks suffered by HBO during the season (both “The Spoils of War” and “Beyond the Wall” leaked ahead of time) could have contributed to these numbers. “It’s no secret that HBO has been plagued by security breaches throughout the latest season, which has seen some episodes leak before broadcast and added to unlicensed activity,” he said. “In addition to the scale of piracy when it comes to popular shows, these numbers demonstrate that unlicensed streaming can be a far more significant type of piracy than torrent downloads.”
Where does HBO go from here? While the piracy numbers are insane, ratings are also through the roof. Should the network bother to be outraged when its viewership is so high? How much higher would it go if they could put a cap on this kind of activity? We’ll see what they do when season 8 rolls around.
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