The most pirated TV show of 2023 has been revealed
HBO/Disney+A new report has revealed the most pirated TV show of 2023, with one HBO series beating out the rest.
Piracy is at an all-time high in the US and across the world. Once upon a time, cam copies and dodgy discs were passed and sold in hushed whispers, but in today’s era, there’s no shortage of ways to access restricted content and watch stuff you’ve not paid for.
It’s currently estimated that pirated material is viewed more than 230 billion times each year, with more than 80% of global piracy stemming from illegal streaming services and torrenting. TV is particularly notorious, with hundreds of billions of episodes said to be streamed annually.
2023 also happens to have been the best year for television of the decade so far – which means there’s been a fair bit of piracy going on, and one show has been torrented more than any other.
The Last of Us is the most pirated show of 2023
The Last of Us is the most torrented show of 2023, according to Torrent Freak.
It seems like HBO is stuck with the poisoned chalice, coming after House of the Dragon took the title in 2022 and Game of Thrones’ extraordinary run of piracy up until its end in 2019. WandaVision stepped up in 2020, followed by The Mandalorian in 2021.
You can check out the full rundown below:
- The Last of Us
- The Mandalorian
- Loki
- Ahsoka
- Secret Invasion
- Silo
- Monarch: Legacy of Monsters
- Tulsa King
- Gen V
- Ted Lasso
“We should note that the chart is based on BitTorrent traffic, which represents a small portion of the piracy landscape. Most people use streaming sites and services nowadays, which generally do not report viewing stats,” the outlet noted.
Notably, there aren’t any Netflix releases on the list. There’s likely a simple reason for that: as of Q3 in 2023, the streamer had more than 247 million paying subscribers, regardless of the year’s price hikes and password-sharing restrictions. That’s a 20% lead on Prime Video, which has an estimated 200 million customers, while Disney Plus and Max have 232 million subscribers combined.
If you want to watch The Last of Us, you can sign up for Max here. You can also find out what we know about Season 2 here, and our ranking of the best TV shows of 2023 here.
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