‘Game of Thrones’ season 5: What is the impact of piracy so far?

While “Game of Thrones” definitely has their own fair share of headlines this season when it comes to action on the show, we really cannot ignore the fact that there are many headlines about some of the action away from the events in King’s Landing. Specifically, we are talking about the epic battle HBO is currently in the midst of against piracy, which may be bloodier then the battle of Blackwater.

For the first few seasons, the network definitely admonished the fact that this was the most-pirated show on TV, but it was admittedly hard to create a solution to stop it from happening. Maybe these viewers were converted to HBO subscribers or DVD buyers down the line, but in the short-term the truth here is still that they were losing money.

The network really tried to make things better for season 5, opening the doors on their HBO NOW subscription service, and also encouraging more simulcasts and quick turnarounds for international airings. What they could not anticipate was the first four episodes being leaked before they premiered.

So how bad is the piracy? Entertainment Weekly reached out to site TorrentFreak, and the premiere “The Wars to Come” has been downloaded a shocking 13 million times. This is more than four million of the live total viewer count for the premiere in the United States. Of these 13 million, over a million of them were located in America. This number surprised us; while the majority of pirates are still overseas, we imaged that having access to HBO readily would cause it to be less of a problem stateside.

Granted, these numbers are surely skewed due to the leak. We’ll get a better test of the HBO NOW impact by the end of the season. Our message would always be to find a way to pay for the series through the proper channels. Sure, “Game of Thrones” makes a ton of money, but even if you are not doing it to support this show, support some of the other quality programming that HBO puts out there that doesn’t have the same viewership. The money allows them to be a premium destination for all sorts of great things.

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