Game of Thrones S06E01: Millions turn to torrents and streams in bid to watch episode for free online

Networks are making it easier for people to catch shows online, but consumers are still being tempted by torrents.

Game of Thrones continues to be the pirate’s choice, as those without HBO/Sky Atlantic seek out torrents.

The first episode of season 6 already had more than a million downloads the morning after its first broadcast, according to TorrentFreak, with 200,000 BitTorrent users and rising sharing it.

HBO can at least take solace in the fact that episodes didn’t leak ahead of the premiere as they did last year - something which led the network to decide not to send out screeners to press this time around.

There are all sorts of reasons you could attach to Game of Thrones consistently being the most pirated show, from its broadcast on a subscription channel to its tech-savvy audience.

Aside from the sheer scale of illegal downloads, there’s some interesting trends among them.

Pirates are now demanding higher quality rips (720p/1080p rather than 480p), the number having of people downloading in HD having risen from 10% a few years back to almost 50%.

You might think that the primarily US broadcast show is mostly pirated outside of the US, but its percentage is actually lower than in the UK. The breakdown by country is: Australia (12.5%), India (9.7%), United States (8.5%) and the United Kingdom (6.9%).

The show returns with second episode ‘Home’ next Sunday, which we got a trailer for today.