Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent
Written by Ernesto on February 10, 2009TV-shows are some of the most wanted files on BitTorrent, and according to some, it’s becoming the modern day TiVo. But what are all those people downloading?
Every week we take a look at the most downloaded TV-Shows on BitTorrent. Lost, which had the honor of being the most pirated show of 2008 is now leading the TV-download chart for the third week in a row. Heroes came close to taking over the lead, but fell a few thousand downloads short.
The data for the most recent TV episodes listed below are collected by TorrentFreak. We use a representative sample of BitTorrent sites and is for informational and educational reference only. We usually include an additional list based on the total number of downloads (not only recent episodes) of all shows in the past week, but these data were not available at the time of publication.
Top Downloads (Recent Episodes)
| ranking | (last week) | show | est. downloads |
|---|---|---|---|
| torrentfreak.com | |||
| 1 | (1) | Lost | 1,640,000 |
| 2 | (…) | Heroes | 1,560,000 |
| 3 | (2) | House M.D. | 720,000 |
| 4 | (3) | 24 | 690,000 |
| 5 | (4) | Smallville | 445,000 |
| 6 | (5) | Battlestar Galactica | 410,000 |
| 7 | (6) | Fringe | 390,000 |
| 8 | (…) | How I Met Your Mother | 385,000 |
| 9 | (…) | The Big Bang Theory | 375,000 |
| 10 | (…) | Gossip Girl | 360,000 |
Previously: Mininova – One Million Torrents Strong
Next: aXXo Issues Anti-Piracy Warning
48 Responses
first!
lost repulses me.
Get shows like..
Dead Set
Wipeout
The Office
Nevermind any of that Crap!
Skins & Shameless are the only TV shows ya need!!
Those numbers are just wrong, almost a joke. They are much higher…
shameless Yes.
new skins is awful.
Fringe,supernatural and lost.
Anyone who says Lost is rubbish clearly hasn’t watched the show or is just a total idiot
24, Eureka, Fringe, Heroes, Prison Break, Supernatural :)
Good to see Big Bang Theory getting the attention it deserves.
Haha, Lost and Heroes fighting for the top spot, over twice what the next spot has…
The Heroes 3×15 torrent I’m on right now has over 100,000 total seeds+peers.
By the suggestions of shows here, it seems like people doesn’t really know what shows there are.
Dude just because someone doesnt like lost doesnt mean there an idiot, the show has gone to complete crap.
I was addicted to like the first season or 2 and then that shit just gets really freaking retarded.
I hate shows that draw out every single thing to be this big dramatic crap and give you NO answers ever and commercial break every 5 seconds.
Its hard enough to keep up with my own life, let alone all those people on that island, way too much to keep up with.. which is probly why i dont like shows like Galactica..
except for smallville i can get all those tv shows from tvload.us without risk of getting sued by the mpaa or something for distributing copyrighted material.
Yer downloading from websites that host the files is so safe, NOT. Those websites are ran by people like the MPAA, RIAA. And lost is shit. The first 2 seasons where ok. After that it just started becoming more and more bull shit and “as if”.
Being sued for downloading a TV show would be epicly retarded..
not saying it cant happen or wont happen.. but you would almost have to ask the lawyers like wtf is wrong with you..
Worst thing they could be upset about is the fact that torrented tv shows dont have commercials..
which they could EASILY F*CKING FIX in 2 seconds by making there own release. Sure not everyone is going to download it.. but its BETTER THEN F*CKING NOTHING which is what they do now.
hulu has most of theses shows streaming for free, y download them?
“hulu has most of theses shows streaming for free, y download them?”
Does it work in countries that are not America?
House and Lost are both excellent shows. I used to watch Heroes but stopped after season 2. Fringe is all right, the rest I’m not really familiar with.
urboy: 90% of tv-series(or was it total video?) are downloaded from outside the US, according to TorrentFreak. . .
. . .and as previously stated; Hulu is for US territory only.
Gossip Girl…torrenting…for those who are too ashamed to admit they watch the show.
even if the studios released their own torrents, within an hour someone else would have a torrent up with the commercials chopped out. Life is too short to watch commercials!
i thought the mentalist would in it.
though i never seen the show.
my taste is too fringe-y, I guess. Burn Notice, Monk, psych, to name a few that ain’t been mentioned here, plus some Brit stuff. Not that I expect any of it to make the above lits.
I can’t believe the office isn’t on there.
:(
I wonder what drives these statistics other than pure popularity of a given show.. #20, maybe that’s part of it?
twenty fif
dexter is another great show
Why isnt dexter there.
I can assure you these statistics are garbage. I have no idea where they come from but for one the list is wrong and for two the amount of downloaders is much much much higher than that.
Gr8. How I Met Your Mother totally deserves this much attention. It rocks!
Love lost!
@16 Are you trying to say there are countries other than America? Wow! How does that work
I download tv shows every day, I have a huge collection of shows so when I travel I can catch up on some shows I don’t watch on a regular basis or want to watch later on in the year.
Uhhh..wat in the world..where the heck is prison break…ur kidding me…its one of the only good shows left worth watching…better then smallville..sigh..
i loved the tv show from the UK ” Skins ” oh yea!
i have not seen the new Skins yet!
The last two series of Skins were amazing, I’m not too sure on the new ones with a whole new cast and all, has potential tho.
OOohh theres a new Heroes out..woo TPB here I come :)
^^^The ‘New’Skins is Great, But completely Different to the first 2 Series. Only a couple of Original cast.
1st few episodes have been Hilarious although extremly unbelievable.
so going off those numbers there has been a total of 6,975,000 torrent downloads last week (in the top 10 that is, I personally think it is much larger than that). That’s a lot of folk to track down and arrest. Or maybe just grab them, sit them in a room and make them watch the ads they missed, would only take an hour or so. Then, everyone’s happy!
I watch 8 out of ten of these on tv now because I downloaded the earlier episodes. I just got caught up on lost and 24. I don’t like them enough to purchase or rent them and don’t like to start watching a show unless its from the beginning. Is hulu compatible was windows media center?
I don’t care to watch them on my pc so that’s why I download.
why would they pirate a show that you can watch for free? o_O
Lost and Heroes ? , i thought people got tired of this sh** already ?
@ glottis8 & urboy
Having the file from a torrent lets you watch commercial free anytime, anywhere on whatever device you want.
Not in the US, no problem.
Going somewhere without internet, no problem.
Don’t want to waste time watching commercials for stuff you’re not gonna buy, no problem.
lost 1st and 2nd season were good now its just crap
What the F.
People watch shows, record them, put them in torrents, others DL them and watch them, what’s pirate about that!
These stations put the next day their episodes on the net.
Currently I own 308 BR-RW’s loaded with movies and shows.
You gotta love Screeners :) Oh that’s pirating, who cares :)
Long Life my Philips BR-RW :)
what? the office isnt on the chart? WTF?
The L Word should be number one.
smallville FTW!!
@29 – Did you notice these are the stats for this week only?
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