While it's been a dismal enough year for cinemas, television and streaming on demand has seen another bumper year thanks to the pandemic.
TorrentFreak's annual list of the most pirated TV shows has revealed that Disney+'s offering earlier in the year, 'WandaVision', has topped the charts with 'Loki' following in second place. 'The Witcher', Netflix's second season of the popular fantasy series with Henry Cavill, made it into third place while Marvel series 'The Falcon and Winter Soldier', 'Hawkeye' and 'What If...?' took the fourth, fifth and sixth place respectively.
Last year saw another Disney+ TV series - 'The Mandalorian' - take over the title of most-pirated TV show of the year, replacing 'Game of Thrones' which held the top spot for almost every year it ran. TorrentFreak's calculations, which were taken from downloads using the BitTorrent client, did come with some caveats. 'Squid Game' and 'Money Heist' didn't make it onto their top list, but noted that had they calculated full seasons instead of individual episodes, both would have been on the Top 10 list. Not only that, BitTorrent makes up only a small fraction of the piracy landscape, and doesn't include illegal streaming sites as well.
It's not surprising that 'WandaVision' has fared so well, seeing as it was Marvel's first big-budget attempt at taking over streaming. The series has made it onto several end-of-year lists (including our own), and with Disney+ set to debut 'Obi-Wan Kenobi' in the new year, expect to see the House of Mouse dominating the piracy lists in 2022 and beyond.
