'Game of Thrones' Premiere Was
Pirated Over 50 Million Times The season eight premiere of ‘Game of Thrones’
was HBO’s largest night of streaming activity
ever, with over 17 million viewers tuning in. But those numbers were dwarfed
by the over 50 million viewers that tuned in illegally. About 55 million people illegally pirated the
episode within the first 24 hours of its premiere. 76.6 percent of these views came from unofficial
streams, 12.2 percent from web downloads
and 10.8 percent from public torrents. According to MUSO, an analytics firm, the most
pirated views by country came from India and China. MUSO believes the pirating is due to the difficulty
of accessing ‘Game of Thrones’ in these countries, as the episodes are either unavailable,
or aired with heavy censoring. The U.S. came in third on the list,
with nearly four million illegal views.
