HBO Had The Most Pirated Show Of 2013 - Here's Why It's Thrilled

In most businesses, piracy is cause for alarm. It's a leaky hole in your bucket of money.

But HBO is looking at things in a rather different light - people "steal" "Game of Thrones" due to the show's incredible popularity, and they do it more for "GoT" than they do for other heavyweight hitters like "Breaking Bad" or "The Walking Dead." In short, HBO is looking at things through a scope where piracy equals free marketing.

"If you go to people who are watching ["Game of Thrones"] without subs, it's a tremendous word-of-mouth thing," Jeff Bewkes told Adweek.

He's the CEO of HBO's parent company Time Warner. "We've been dealing with this for 20, 30 years-people sharing subs, running wires down the backs of apartment buildings. Our experience is that it leads to more paying subs. I think you're right that Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world. That's better than an Emmy."

So bottom line?

Even if HBO caved to demand and offered its streaming HBO GO service for a monthly fee a la Netflix or allowed you to pay for individual episodes through iTunes the day after air, it wouldn't have much of an affect on piracy. And in a bizarre way, piracy is a good thing for HBO because it drums up buzz for its new shows.