'Game of Thrones' Premiere Was<br />Pirated Over 50 Million Times The season eight premiere of ‘Game of Thrones’<br />was HBO’s largest night of streaming activity<br />ever, with over 17 million viewers tuning in. But those numbers were dwarfed<br />by the over 50 million viewers that tuned in illegally. About 55 million people illegally pirated the<br />episode within the first 24 hours of its premiere. 76.6 percent of these views came from unofficial<br />streams, 12.2 percent from web downloads<br />and 10.8 percent from public torrents. According to MUSO, an analytics firm, the most<br />pirated views by country came from India and China. MUSO believes the pirating is due to the difficulty<br />of accessing ‘Game of Thrones’ in these countries, as the episodes are either unavailable,<br />or aired with heavy censoring. The U.S. came in third on the list,<br />with nearly four million illegal views.
