“Dragonstone,” the first episode of Game of Thrones season 7, was watched by a lot of people. 16.1 million viewers watched it across all platforms (live, repeats, streaming, DVR) within a few days of it airing last Sunday, per Entertainment Weekly. But according to piracy analytics firm MUSO, that’s nothing compared to how many watched it illegally, as Business Inside reports.

According to the firm, “Dragonstone” was viewed illegally a staggering 90 million times across the globe — that includes the number of times it was streamed (77.9 million times), torrented on public trackers (8.3 million times), directly downloaded (4.9 million times) and torrented from private trackers (500,000 times). That’s a lot of times. The top five countries for illegal views were the United States (15.1 million), the UK (6.2 million), Germany (4.9 million), India (4.3 million), and Indonesia (4.3 million).

“There is no denying that these figures are huge,” so MUSO cofounder Andy Chatterley in the understatement of the century, “so they’re likely to raise more than a few eyebrows in the mainstream industry, but it’s in line with the sort of scale we see across piracy sites and should be looked at objectively. What we’re seeing here isn’t just P2P torrent downloads but unauthorized streams and every type of piracy around the premiere. This is the total audience picture, which is usually unreported.”

Audience figures have always been a critical measure for studios and TV execs to assess the health of shows. The fact that there’s been over 90 million streams and downloads of the Game of Thrones season seven premiere outside of the official channels in the first three days since airing, not only shows just how popular this show is, but the massive opportunity to engage people and bring them back to legitimate mediums.

It’s good that Chatterley can look on the brighter side of this. HBO is trying to stem the tide by sending warnings to pirates through IP Echelon, it’s anti-piracy partner. But I dunno…I’m not sure it’s working.

How does HBO fight those kinds of numbers? CAN it? And how much bigger will they get before the show wraps up with season 8?

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h/t TorrentFreak