In what has become something of a tradition, Game of Thrones was the most pirated TV show of 2015.
This marks the fourth straight year that HBO’s George R.R. Martin-sourced fantasy series was stolen more than any other TV show, continuing a streak that’s been in place since season two. It’s important to note that illegal download stats are unofficial estimates, but the Game of Thrones numbers so greatly outstrip number two “winner” The Walking Dead that it’s no contest.
Game of Thrones is the clear winner with an estimated 14.4 million downloads across the show’s fifth season. The Walking Dead falls into a dominant number two position with 6.9 million estimated downloads, significantly more than #3 “winner” The Big Bang Theory’s 4.4 million.
The stats are much closer after that, with Arrow (#4, 3.9 million), The Flash (#5, 3.6 million), Mr. Robot (#6, 3.5 million), Vikings (#7, 3.3 million), Supergirl (#8, 3 million), The Blacklist (#9, 2.9 million) and Suits (#10, 2.6 million) filling out the rest of the top 10. The margin for error in tabulating these figures means the race, as it were, really comes down to the top three.
TorrentFreak’s annual top-10 “most pirated TV shows” list compiles data from several sources, including the stats reported by public BitTorrent trackers. Illegal streams and downloads from file-hosting services don’t factor in, as there’s no public data to draw from.
In other words: measuring the most pirated anything is not an exact science. It’s a snapshot of data that likely just skates along the surface of a much deeper pool. The sampled sources are reliable enough, but it’s important to understand where the data is coming from and who/what it represents.
Over five seasons, Game of Thrones has had the dubious honor of being the most downloaded show in four of those years. It closed out 2011, the year the series launched, behind Dexter at #2.
