Game of Throne season 8 premiere pirated nearly 55 million times

India, China, US, UK and Nigeria are reportedly among the top countries that illegally streamed the Game of Thrones season 8‘s first episode last night.

The data was released by analytics firm MUSO, which says that the season 8 premiere had almost 55 million pirated views across illegal streams, downloads, and torrents in the first 24 hours.

Of those 55 million pirated views, MUSO says that the vast majority (76.6 per cent) came from unofficial streams of the episode, with web downloads accounting for 12.2 per cent of views, public torrents for 10.8 per cent, and private torrents for 0.5 per cent.

For comparison, HBO saw a total of 17.4 million viewers across its three platforms (the premium cable channel and its two internet streaming services, HBO Go and HBO Now), split between 11.8 million for the traditional TV channel and 5.6 million on the company’s official internet streams. Those numbers will likely go up in the coming days as more viewers watch the episode, but, presumably, so will the pirated views.

According to MUSO’s data, the most pirated views by country came from India (roughly 10 million views), which MUSO speculates is due to the difficulty of accessing the show there, and China (with roughly 5 million pirated views), which only airs a censored version of the show through official channels. On the other hand, the United States — which perhaps has the easiest legal means to access HBO — came in third on the charts with nearly 4 million illegal views.

Andy Chatterley, co-founder and CEO of MUSO, says:

“Perhaps unsurprisingly, the relentless, global demand for access to HBO’s Game of Thrones, through both legitimate and illegitimate channels, is still absolutely staggering.

“Season 8 has been long-anticipated by fans around the world, leading to what can only be described as piracy mania as dedicated fans look for streams and torrents, whether that be a result of the content not being available in their region, wanting to get in on the action early through fear of missing out, or to avoid seeing spoilers on social media.

“The episode also leaked hours in advance of the premiere, causing a frenzy on torrent and streaming sites across the world.

“Regardless of the rationale, the piracy figures for just the first 24 hours since the episode aired demonstrate that these audiences cannot – and should not – be ignored.

“Despite considerable global efforts to tackle piracy over the past couple of years, this data shows that consumers are still being driven to unlicensed sources to find content.

“It’s imperative that rights holders understand that piracy audiences are some of their most dedicated fans, which, above all else, presents a vast commercial opportunity.”