Piracy doesn’t matter to Game of Thrones
Game of thrones is undoubtedly one of the most popular TV shows on the planet right now, with the Season 1 DVD boxset breaking records last year. Indeed, in 2012 Game of Thrones was the most pirated TV shows of the year with 4.2 million downloads of a single episode.
And yet, during a Q&A session with one of the show's directors David Petrarca during the Perth's Writers Festival, he shrugged off the show's high piracy rate. As the Sydney Morning Herald reports, Petrarca said that shows like Game of Thrones thrived on "cultural buzz" and capitalized on the social commentary they generated. "That's how they survive."
Petrarca claimed that, "Everyone wants to do premium cable now," and with HBO's worldwide subscriber base over 60 million, piracy doesn't really affect a show such as Game of Thrones, and that the channel can keep on making high production shows. Of course, a large part of the piracy is also due to HBO;s regional restictions and true enough, the buzz behind such a show is what makes it relevant to the mainstream audience around the world.
