Let's put some zeroes on that so you'll get what we're talking about - Game of Thrones was illegally streamed and downloaded 1,000,000,000 times.
Even by legal, conventional standards, Game of Thrones has enjoyed its highest ratings thus far and broke records in the process, but the numbers who tuned into the show via illegal means is pretty damn staggering. According to piracy tracking firm MUSO, a total of 84.7% of those who watched it illegally did so via streaming, while only 9.1% watched it via torrent download.
MUSO's CEO, Andy Chatterly, told TorrentFreak that they suspect the high numbers of illegal downloads and streams came from the fact that episodes leaked early online.
Here's the breakdown of estimates from MUSO.
Episode one: 187,427,575
Episode two: 123,901,209
Episode three: 116,027,851
Episode four: 121,719,868
Episode five: 151,569,560
Episode six: 184,913,279
Episode seven (as of 3rd Sept): 143,393,804
All Episode Bundles – Season 7: 834,522
Total (as of 3rd September) = 1,029,787,668
Via TorrentFreak