After breaking records for HBO in its season finale, it is claimed that the latest Game of Thrones series has so far been pirated more than one billion times.

The figure includes illegal torrent downloads and also unlicensed streams, said tech company Muso - which says it has the largest database of metadata on real-time piracy behaviour.

It described the number watching the show illegally as "unprecedented".

"Within the first 72 hours of broadcast, the Season 7 premiere was downloaded and streamed over 90 million times," its report says.

"This was eclipsed by the season finale which accumulated more than 120 million downloads and streams (in 72 hours)."


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Up until 3 September, its report claims episode one had been watched illegally more than 187 million times and the finale more than 143 million.

The company said the total for the seven episodes is 1,029,787,668.

Figures for legal viewing are estimated to average 31 million per episode, it added.

According to its report, streaming made up nearly 85% of the illegal views, with torrent and downloads nearly 15%.

During the latest series, a cyberattack on HBO and a leak from India saw scripts and upcoming episodes appearing online prematurely.

"Game of Thrones has become one of the biggest global entertainment phenomena of today and activity across piracy networks has been totally unprecedented," said Muso's Andy Chatterley.

The UK is second only to the US in terms of piracy rates, where there is now a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment for people found guilty of copyright infringement.

Despite these sanctions, piracy levels are continuing to grow.