With the end of the year just a few days away, fans have been inundated with top 10 lists breaking down the picks from critics across the country for their top movies, TV shows, albums and more. There is one top 10 list that no TV show wants to be on, though, TorrentFreak’s most pirated TV shows of the year. And for the past four years, HBO’s smash hitGame of Throneshas topped this list. The hit fantasy series was already named thetop trendingTV show for 2016, and today we have word that it has retained its title as the most pirated TV show for the fifth year in a row.
This report comes fromTorrent Freak, a website which also debunked another recent story about the Amazon Studios showThe Grand Tour. A report surfaced a few weeks ago thatThe Grand Tour, which reunitesTop GearhostsJames May,Jeremy ClarksonandRichard Hammond, was the “most-pirated showof all time”, with the series premiere reportedly being pirated 7.9 million times. TorrentFreak reported last year that the Season 5 finale ofGame of Throneswas pirated 14.4 million times, nearly double the 7.9 million purported tally forThe Grand Tour, which doesn’t even seem to be accurate. The site reached out to MUSO, the piracy monitoring firm that claimedThe Grand Tourwas the most pirated show in history, and they clarified thatThe Grand Touris simply the most pirated UK-based series.
The site also reports that at its highest, there were roughly 350,000 people sharing an episode ofGame of Thronesthrough various torrent sites, a peak which was attained just after theGame of Thrones Season 6 finaledebuted online. The site also reveals that this year did not yield any record numbers as far as internet traffic was concerned, but they speculated that many users switched to streaming sites this year, which likely impacted the numbers. As forThe Grand Tour, it did crack the top 10 for the most pirated shows, but just barely.
AMC’s hit zombie seriesThe Walking Deadretained the #2 spot on this year’s most-pirated list, with HBO’s new seriesWestworlddebuting in the #3 spot. A new series ranking this high on the list is said to be “quite an achievement,” which speaks volumes about the sudden popularity of the series. The CW’sThe FlashandArrowround out the top 5 in fourth and fifth places, respectively, swapping places from last year’s list.The Big Bang Theorydropped from third place last year to sixth place this year, followed byVikingsstaying put in seventh place,Luciferdebuting in eighth place,Suitsjumping from 10th place last year to ninth place this year, andThe Grand Tourdebuting in the 10-spot.
It’s worth noting that this “victory” forGame of Thronescomes in a year where they made a big change to combat piracy. For the first time in the show’s history, HBO refused to send outadvanced screenersto members of the press for Season 6, after the first four episodes ofGame of ThronesSeason 5 leaked just one day before the season premiere. This season, one of the show’s biggest twists, the resurrection ofKit Harington’s Jon Snow, was revealed in the second episode, which is likely another reason that these screeners weren’t sent out.
