For the third consecutive time, Game of Thrones has been declared the most pirated TV show of the year by TorrentFreak. After notching more than 8 million downloads via BitTorrent, the HBO series and its season finale easily topped the site’s list, which has The Walking Dead and The Big Bang Theory coming in as runners-up with roughly half as many downloads. Focusing on single episodes, the site used data from a handful of public BitTorrent trackers to make the list. (Online streams and downloads for file-hosting services were not included because that data is less accessible, the site noted.) As the Verge pointed out, TorrentFreak’s process is an inexact science, but the calculations do reveal there’s no one even close to GoT.
Here’s the rest of the site’s top ten, with the estimated number of downloads next to their respective titles.
1. Game of Thrones: 8,100,000
2. The Walking Dead: 4,800,000
3. The Big Bang Theory: 3,900,000
4. How I Met Your Mother: 3,500,000
5. Gotham: 3,200,000
6. Arrow: 2,900,000
7. Grey’s Anatomy: 2,800,000
8. Vikings: 2,700,000
9. Suits: 2,500,000
10. South Park: 2,400,000