Game of Thrones is a highly competitive television show and charts of all sorts reveal the George R. R. Martin based fantasy battle at the top of the list. That it is HBO’s most popular series of all time is not difficult to acknowledge, taking into consideration the amount of people who adhered to the Westeros universe. ‘’Winter is coming’’ is now such a popular quote not only because degrees have lowered drastically. The most recent classification which ended with Game of Thrones at the top of the list is probably the most contested and outrageous one so far; those not agreeing might comment not on the placement of GOT, but on the list itself. Game of Thrones is the most pirated TV show of 2014, sources confirm.
TorrentFreak revealed that Game of Thrones was crowned as the king of the ‘’not-so-fair’’ battle of illegally downloaded television series of the year. In terms of pirating and GOT, this is not an unexpected result considering the fact that the show won the first position not for the first, but for the third time in a row with a total which surpassed eight million downloads. Next in line was the zombie world of The Walking Dead, which got almost half of the total downloads of the top position, a number under five million downloads. To prove that even pirating is varied and that it appeals to different ages, tastes and genres, the third position of the list was taken by the geeky comedy The Big Band Theory, with an approximate number of downloads of four million. The next titles on the list kept scores tighter, with minor differences in numbers in comparison to the top three pirated television series of the year. Number four was taken by another comedy, How I Met Your Mother, followed by titles like Gotham, Arrow, Grey’s Anatomy or Vikings. The last places of the top ten chart belonged to the fancy lawyers in Suits and the sarcastic and animated South Park characters.
The top ten torrent freak provided list paralleled the number of illegal downloads (per single episode) with the estimated number of US TV viewers and thus wrote about the lead that ‘’Game of Thrones’ top listing doesn’t come as much of a surprise. Earlier this year it broke an all-time piracy record when more than 254,114 peers shared the same torrent file simultaneously.’’ This being the case, it is interesting to follow the numbers of both lists (downloads versus viewers) and compare the sums gathered per television series. It is quite difficult to state at a first glance which of the two variables is mostly preferred by the public, as differences are in some cases outrageously obvious and in others barely visible. Take for example The Big Bang Theory and South Park. In the case of the Jim Parsons and Johnny Galecki comedy, the reported number of downloads is of 3,900,000 (estimated), whereas the number of viewers is obviously higher – 18,240,000 (estimated). As for South Park, downloads gather an estimated total of 2,400,000 and TV viewers gather the approximate number of 2,400,000.
The issue of the permitted or blamed habit of downloading is as old as the history of internet (or even older, if we were to replace ‘’download’’ with other practices) and hackers or not, some will most definitely continue their journey as pirates of the virtual world and the list below stands as an undebatable proof on the controversial matter.
Most downloaded TV-shows on BitTorrent of 2014 (via TorrentFreak):
| Rank | Show | Est. Downloads | Est. US TV Viewers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Game of Thrones | 8,100,000 | 7,160,000 |
| 2 | The Walking Dead | 4,800,000 | 17,290,000 |
| 3 | The Big Bang Theory | 3,900,000 | 18,240,000 |
| 4 | How I Met Your Mother | 3,500,000 | 13,130,000 |
| 5 | Gotham | 3,200,000 | 11,810,000 |
| 6 | Arrow | 2,900,000 | 3,920,000 |
| 7 | Grey’s Anatomy | 2,800,000 | 9,810,000 |
| 8 | Vikings | 2,700,000 | 3,560,000 |
| 9 | Suits | 2,500,000 | 2,800,000 |
| 10 | South Park | 2,400,000 | 2,400,000 |