Online Piracy and The Game of Thrones

HBO's ever popular The Game of Thrones, recently renewed for a third season, seems to have a viewership far beyond HBO subscribers in season two.  Forbes magazine recently reported that season two has been downloaded illegally more than 25 million times since April, making it the second most popular piloted program, with Dexter leading the race.  

If we can use piracy as another indicator of popularity, then The Game of Thrones is a great success.  If we look at it in terms of lost revenue, HBO cannot be happy.  And if we look at it as the continued balkanization of Internet TV viewing in this age of proprietary viewing, then it shows we have a long way to go.  The Oatmeal has a great cartoon that summarizes this frustration.  

Forbes continues to note

For the millions of Americans who don’t subscribe to HBO, or who may not even watch shows on a television, this means there is no legal way to watch Game of Thrones. If you only watch TV on your laptop, there’s no way you’re going to pay $50/month for cable and another $15/month for HBO...HBO is missing out on a huge potential audience by limiting themselves to cable TV subscribers. I don’t blame the company for keeping their shows off of Hulu or Netflix, but offering HBO GO as a stand-alone service could put a serious dent in these piracy numbers, and bring in a lot more legitimate viewers to shows like Game of Thrones.

The fenced-in cable programs may be able to hold out for some time, but I expect the model will collapse with time.  In the meantime, audiences will make do and find ways to view these programs.