The season premiere of Game of Thrones’ third outing topped one million illegal downloads within 24 hours of airing in the States on 31 March this year.
The series has the distinction of being the most pirated TV series of 2012 and, if the recent online activity for the show’s first new episode is any indication it is set to claim the top spot again in 2012. Games of Thrones’ season premiere broke records for the most concurrent users in a torrent swarm, reports TorrentFreak, edging out TV show Heroes’ record of 144,663 peers and replacing it with 163,088 peers on a single torrent.
The piracy seems to be based around the delay from when the show airs in the US compared to other countries, something that HBO has tried to address by reducing that gap. Australia, according to TorrentFreak’s figures, is currently the country that is most keen on the series as far as illegal downloads go but it also managed to pull in some decent numbers for the legal broadcast. 6.7 million American viewers in total tuned in for the Sunday premiere.
Source: The Verge