SUPERHEROES and HBO dominate the most pirated television shows of the last year.
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| Emmy and BAFTA award-winning show, Game of Thrones is the most illegally downloaded TV show |
Game of Thrones has retained its crown as the most pirated television show in the world for the fourth year in a row.
The record-breaking drama, which has scooped countless gongs including Emmys, BAFTAs and Screen Actors Guild Award trophies, was downloaded a staggering 14.4 million times via BitTorrent alone.
The fantasy epic beat its own piracy record from last year, according to TorrentFreak.
More than half of the downloads occurred within the first week after the US television show aired.
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| The bloody-thirsty season finale – entitled Mother's Mercy – was the single most torrented episode |
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| The next season of Game of Thrones will begin to air in April 2016 |
The bloody-thirsty season finale – entitled Mother's Mercy – was the single most torrented episode, topping 1.5 million downloads globally within eight hours of the show airing on HBO.
To achieve this, a staggering 258,131 people shared the same torrent file simultaneously.
HBO has tried to crack down on piracy of their biggest show by airing Game of Thrones simultaneously across the world.
In second place, with 6.9 million downloads, was AMC's The Walking Dead. And third place was nerd-comedy, The Big Bang Theory.
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| The Top 10 Most Pirated Shows of 2015, according to TorrentFreak |
Superhero franchises Arrow and The Flash follow in fourth and fifth place, which both air on American broadcast television network, The CW.
The two shows, based on DC Comics properties, take place in the same fictional universe and have overlapping themes and characters.
Another DC Comics hero – SuperGirl – also features in the Top 10 after it launched on US channel CBS late this year.
Aside from the most downloaded shows, TorrentFreak also notes an increase in streaming quality.
Illegal viewers now appear to favour higher quality downloads, when compared to previous years.
However despite this trend, the non-HD 480p copies of TV-shows are still the most popular among pirates, followed by 720p and 1080p respectively.
This data is collected from a number of statistics reported by public BitTorrent trackers.
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| The Flash and Arrow share the same fictional universe – and have both stormed up the piracy list |
The full breakdown of the most pirated shows –
- Game of Thrones – 14,400,000 downloads
- The Walking Dead – 6,900,000 downloads
- The Big Bang Theory – 4,400,000 downloads
- Arrow – 3,900,000 downloads
- The Flash – 3,600,000 downloads
- Mr. Robot – 3,500,000 downloads
- Vikings – 3,300,000 downloads
- Supergirl – 3,000,000 downloads
- The Blacklist – 2,900,000 downloads
- Suits – 2,600,000 downloads
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