pirated TorrentFreak Guinness World Records BitTorrent trackers Jeff Bleich HBO
Game of Thrones has been widely pirated, primarily outside the US. According to the file-sharing news website TorrentFreak, it was the most pirated television series from 2012 to 2019 (except 2018, when no new episodes were broadcast), and Guinness World Records named it the most-pirated television program in 2015. Illegal downloads increased to about seven million in the first quarter of 2015, up 45 percent from 2014. An unnamed episode was downloaded about 4.28 million times through public BitTorrent trackers in 2012, roughly equal to its number of broadcast viewers. Piracy rates were particularly high in Australia prompting the US Ambassador to Australia, Jeff Bleich, to issue a statement in 2013 condemning the practice there. Delays in availability by non-HBO broadcasters before 2015 and the cost of subscriptions to their services have been cited as causes for the series's illegal distribution. According to TorrentFreak, a subscription to a service broadcasting Game of Thrones cost up to $25 per month in the United States, up to £26 per episode in the UK and up to $52 per episode in Australia.
