Last night the fifth season finale of HBO’s mega-hit “Game of Thrones” aired, and many fans are still reeling. A chunk of those fans also didn’t pay for it.
Since it’s very first season “Game of Thrones” has been a source of growing popularity and consternation for HBO. It’s a valuable asset, and one that in the past they’ve been reluctant to actively defend. But like the fantasy rulers the show depicts, HBO is finally fighting for every inch of it.
Of course they’re using far different means, and are facing a much different kind of pirate than you’d ever see in the universe of “Game of Thrones.” In the past, HBO has publicly taken the problem in stride; a few representatives have said it doesn’t hurt sales. CEO Jeff Bewkes even called the high number of pirates “better than an Emmy.”
But that attitude could only go on for so long, and copyright infringement of “Game of Thrones” has been coming from all angles. In fact for most of its run, the show has beat piracy record after piracy record, with more people watching the show’s finale via piracy than HBO in 2013. It wore that crown again in 2014, and has been on track for a similar accolade this year.
And the attacks keep coming: this year’s advent of Periscope and live-streaming apps like it, have led to some users streaming “Game of Thrones,” or the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight for folks who don’t have HBO or share passwords with their loved ones—and forced the cable company to finally stand up for its copyright.*
So what changed for HBO? It’s more than the $600,000 in potential viewers it lost from the “fight of the century” or the ever-upping ante of Westeros.
Lately it’s actually been trying harder to appeal to those users who won’t purchase cable, and thus gain traditional access to HBO. HBO NOW was launched just in time for the “Game of Thrones” season five premiere; allowing users to pay only $14.99 a month to gain access to the HBO library without having a cable subscription. It’s a wise business decision since the market is increasingly headed that direction, as Indiewire reports:
That’s one key reason why downloads and streaming of movies and video content will finally, for the first time, exceed revenues from buying and renting DVDs.
…U.S. movie downloads and video streaming subscriptions could jump as much as 13% to $9.5 billion in 2015; meanwhile the sales and rentals of DVDs will continue to decline, to $7.8 billion. Streaming will be a $12 billion industry by 2017–that’s more than annual domestic ticket sales at movie theaters, which have yet to crack $11 billion.
In many ways HBO was prepared this trend: HBO Go, an online streaming component of its cable package, has been around for more than five years; the fact that it wasn’t tied to ad revenue and its prestige kept it as appointment viewing let it be free from the DVR revolution. Streaming was a natural extension of their empire.
So for users who have more access than ever to HBO content to still turn around and bootleg it, not to mention making it the most quickly illegally downloaded show in TV history, HBO is now seeing piracy for what it is: giving away money. And in the ever-growing realm of streaming entertainment, you either collect revenue or you die.