HBO tried to stop people from pirating Game of Thrones. Oh, how it tried! Not by cracking down, per se, but by trying to appeal to fans where it thought they wanted to go. That mean embracing chord cutting and giving them access to a standalone app. Sadly, it didn’t work.
Game of Thrones wound up as the most pirated show of the year, according to a report out from TorrentFreak on Sunday. Most impressively, this is the fourth year in a row that the show has taken that title.
Not only that, but the numbers actually went up. This year the show’s season finale had an estimated 14.4 million downloads via BitTorrent. Not only is that, once again, higher than its television viewership in the U.S, but its a 79 percent increase over the 8.1 million that downloaded the show’s finale last year!
At this point HBO has to be tearing its hair out over this problem. The network tried so hard to combat piracy this year, making its biggest move by debuting HBO Now, its stand alone streaming app, one that doesn’t require a cable subscription, in April.
It also tried to take on the problem by simulcasting the show in 170 countries at once, thereby hoping to reduce the number of foreign viewers who didn’t want to have to wait for the show to air in their country. However the network was immediately thwarted when the first four episodes of the season hit the Internet before the first episode aired.
That is not to say that HBO Now has not had any impact; quite the contrary actually.
In the United States, from July 2014 to July 2015, revenue from the Top 10 video streaming apps more than tripled, with the vast majority of revenue growth in the United States was driven by HBO Now and Hulu. That is especially impressive that HBO Now was only available for three months at that point.
In addition, HBO Now also topped the list of the streaming app with the most revenue, beating out MLB.com At Bat, Hulu and The NBA.
So, obviously HBO Now is a popular service, and it’s bringing in a lot of money, so I doubt HBO is complaining much. By most any measure, HBO Now was a big success. Except that it just couldn’t do anything about piracy. It’s starting to feel like nothing can at this point. People who pirate are going to pirate, it seems, and very little is going to change that.
The other thing to note was the absolute dominance of Game of Thrones this season. It more than doubled the next show on the list, The Walking Dead, which had 6.9 million downloads, and it was more than triple the third show, the Big Bang Theory, which had 4.4 million downloads.
(Image source: dailytech.com)
