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The top 10 most pirated shows of August 2016

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By Natan Edelsburg | SVP

August 23, 2016 | 5 min read

Last month there were major attacks by the US federal government on torrenting. Kick Ass and Torrentz.eu were left shut down resulting in a massive decline in their usage. The Pirate Bay is still in use and Mr. Robot stole the month. As pirates move to streaming there will be a big shift in in finding content. Here are the full charts and insights from SimilarWeb.

USA Network

USA Network's Mr. Robot

  • There have been some recent shakeups in the online torrenting world that have changed how, and where, people are now downloading TV shows, movies, and more.
  • In our previous TV rankings, we looked at the most popular shows from three of the top torrenting sites around the world : kat.cr, torrentz.eu, and the piratebay.org. However, this month due to some shutdowns, we only looked at popular shows on the Pirate Bay domain and KAT and Torrentz.eu are no longer relevant.
  • On July 20th, 2016, KAT was shut down by law enforcement and immediately their traffic took a hit. Website visits went from 16.2 million on July 20th to 5.4 million on July 21st and have been declining ever since.
  • Similarly, torrentz.eu, ceased operations on August 5th and almost instantly, users took notice. Website traffic dropped from 6.8 million worldwide visits on August 5th to 5.5 million on August 6th, eventually falling below 3 million.
  • The Pirate Bay, however, is still afloat and over the last four weeks users have been flocking to the site to find their favorite TV shows and movies.
  • Among movies, Independence Day Resurgence was the most torrented movie over the last 4 weeks, followed by Suicide Squad. Batman: The Killing Joke ranked 3rd overall, and was one of three animated movies that made the top 10
  • Over on TV shows, Mr. Robot began airing season 2 on July 13th, and at least among torrent users, the show has been a huge hit. It was far and away the post popular TV show of the last 4 weeks, nabbing 37% of the top traffic share overall.
  • Next in terms of popularity was Suits, which began airing season 6 on July 13th. The show ranked well among Pirate Bay users, nabbing 22% of the top traffic share.
  • Overall, there were several shows which ranked in July but didn’t make the most recent rankings. Silicon Valley for example ranked second in our last rankings but are nowhere to be found in the list below:

SimilarWeb is the leading competitive market intelligence firm providing data analytics on desktop websites, mobile web and mobile apps. The SimilarWeb platform provides PPC, SEO, Media Buyers and Affiliates an edge over the competition with actionable insights into their competitor’s marketing tactics. Discover the data for yourself at SimilarWeb, with free insights for any website or mobile app.

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