Game of Thrones season 7 was illegally downloaded 1 billion times

The recently concluded seventh season of Game of Thrones was illegally downloaded and streamed 1 billion times, a new report says.

While the viewership for Game of Thrones achieved unprecedented heights in the recently concluded season seven - the finale scored a record-breaking 12 million live US viewers - the number of people who watched the show illegally increases the stakes dramatically.

Daenerys Targaryen in a still from Game of Thrones.

According to a report from anti-piracy firm MUSO, the numbers are “unprecedented” and “staggering”. The season premiere was downloaded 90 million time within the first 72 hours, and the finale was downloaded 120 million times within the same time period.

“Of the 1.03 billion total piracy instances for the season 84.66% were streams, 9.12% were torrents, and 5.59% were downloads,” said a Vareity report.

“Game of Thrones has become one of the biggest global entertainment phenomena of today and activity across piracy networks has been totally unprecedented,” said Andy Chatterley, co-founder and CEO of MUSO, according to Variety. “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. 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. At MUSO, we look at all types of piracy, not just torrents, and that is why these numbers have been illuminated.”

Here’s a breakdown of how many times each episode was downloaded:

Episode one: 187,427,575
Episode two: 123,901,209
Episode three: 116,027,851
Episode four: 121,719,868
Episode five: 151,569,560
Episode six: 184,913,279
Episode seven: 143,393,804
All-episode bundles: 834,522

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