Streaming to the future

Over the last year, streaming is fast becoming the norm for pirates. Besides the ease of access, it also poses another problem for those trying to control it. Streaming isn’t as easily traceable as traditional piracy. The increased popularity of set-top boxes for smart TVs armed with Kodi apps and add-ons is adding to this snowball effect.

Despite exact figures not being available, it’s fair to assume HBO lost hundreds of thousands of potentially paying customers over the last couple of days. Not even an increase in legitimate availability of the show all over the globe helped lessen the blow.

Game of Thrones has won dozens of awards since its debut six years ago, including a staggering 38 Emmy’s. But it also holds the honour of being the most pirated TV show ever with the season five opener being downloaded more than 1,5 million times within the first eight hours after broadcast. The season six opener followed closely with more than a million downloads within 12 hours after airing.

But will the Kingdom of Westeros reign supreme again this year in the piracy wars? Not even time can tell. TorrentFreak, who annually assembles the list of most pirated shows, recently admitted that due to the increase in illegal streaming it will be difficult to provide accurate numbers.

Luckily this problem is not affecting figures for legitimate views. HBO just announced that 10,10 million people watched Sunday’s episode on their various platforms in the US, setting a new record. That’s a significant bump from the 7,94 million people that tuned in for the season six premiere last year.

Despite the uptake, the network admits they’ve been struggling with the issue of piracy for years, but have learned to live with it. “For literally 20, 30 years people have always been running wires down the back of apartment buildings and sharing with their neighbours,” Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes told Forbes in 2014. “Our experience is, it all leads to more penetration, more paying subs, more health for HBO, less reliance on having to do paid advertising…

“If you go around the world, I think you’re right, Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world. Well, you know, that’s better than an Emmy.”