The good news for Game of Thrones this week is that the piracy numbers were nothing like last year.
Of course, the chances of the piracy numbers being anything like last year were very low. Due to the leak of the first four episode screeners 24 hours prior to the Season 5 premiere, everyone was extra aware of the ability to download the first chunk of the season. By the time all was said and done, “The Wars to Come” was downloaded 13 million times.
This year, HBO and Game of Thrones took all the precautions. No screeners were sent to anyone. Those sites who had their recaps up at 10pm sharp Sunday night were those that were invited to the LA premiere two weeks prior, and from the looks of how many professional television writers and recappers got their reviews up at 10pm sharp, it looks as if the audience for the premiere was largely comprised of them. (This would also explain how they kept everyone in the audience from leaking what happened. They filled the room with men and women who are used to living under embargoes.)
There was a moment Friday night when it looked like the episode might leak, as screencaps leaked out of France giving away most of Sunday night’s twists. Those screencaps made it obvious that whoever was leaking them had the full episode, but didn’t appear online ahead of Sunday night.
A leaked image from the Friday before the Season 6 premiere
Other factors were also in place. HBO Now is no longer Apple TV-only, making it an effective alternative available in many homes. HBO Go didn’t crash, for the first time in living memory. HBO itself declared this a free weekend for all cable subscribers—and if anyone missed that it was a free weekend, they had certainly heard by Sunday afternoon, as it was appended to every article talking about Beyoncé’s Lemonade special that had aired the night before.
In the end, the piracy numbers were respectable, but well below last year’s. There were only about a million downloads for the first episode in the first 12 hours after the premiere, according to Torrentfreak. Now, that’s a huge number, but not compared to the numbers the show usually does. Season 4’s premiere was downloaded 1.17 million times in the first 15 hours. In fact, the last time Game of Thrones‘ piracy numbers were only around this level was in Season 3.
Does this mean that HBO has finally turned the tide? Probably not. If we take Season 5 out of the equation, and look over the Season 3 and Season 4 premieres, then the show’s piracy numbers are only down slightly, suggesting that they’re merely settled back to their regular levels. After all, HBO can do what they will, but as Salladhor Saan would tell you, a pirate’s gonna pirate.