Breaking Bad's dominance at this year's Emmy Awards prompted a five-fold increase in illegal downloads, according to reports, with a 412% increase from pirates online.
Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul's final farewell was the star of the night, picking up the biggie for best drama series, amongst others and it seems it pushed viewers to check the show out - illegally.
For the week before the awards the average daily users sharing episodes of the show was 27,587 but this jumped to 141,334 according to CEG Tek, the week after the awards show. Bryan, Aaron and Anna Gunn all won awards in their respective acting categories. It's not too much if a surprise, after the finale episode of the final season saw half a million illegal downloads in half an hour.
It still wasn't enough to topple HBO's juggernaut Game Of Thrones, which also enjoyed a boost, taking it to an average of 396,734 daily users. That's a whole lot of Jon Snow. Despite being an online source, Netflixs was also targeted by pirates, with House of Cards and Orange is the New Black also seeing a boost in figures.
Breaking Bad saw a huge increase in illegal downloads after Emmy Awards (AMC)
Despite the fact it's illegal users, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes claimed their number one spot was "better than an Emmy," because it generated buzz around the show. He told Variety last year: "Our experience is, it all leads to more subs,"
"We let the programming and reviews talk for us."
The same has been said by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, he previously told the BBC: "I see that there's two sides to this coin, if I'm being honest,"
"In some ways the illegal downloading has helped us, certainly, in terms of brand awareness," he said. "The downside is a lot of folks who worked on the show would have made more money, myself included, if all those downloads had been legal."
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