‘Lost’ Series Finale Sets New BitTorrent Download Record

On Sunday, May 23, a television chapter that had kept millions of fans on the edge of their seat was closed, as ABC aired the series finale for “Lost.” The sixth and final season might not have gone with a bang in terms of how fans received it but it did manage to set a new record as regards the number of times it was illegally downloaded in just the first day, as TorrentFreak reports.

As compared to the preceding hype and the almost ridiculously high amounts ABC charged for a 30-second ad slot (in the region of $900,000, as per some reports), the finale did not fare remarkably in the ratings. Of course, ratings were solid, being the highest numbers “Lost” got in the past two years, but they still fell short of expectations. Not the same can be said, though, about the number of illegal downloads the series finale has generated, as here it managed to set a(n unwanted) record.

“The finale of Lost has shattered all previous download records on BitTorrent. In less than a day, close to a million people have downloaded the last two episodes, with more than 100,000 people sharing a single torrent at the same time. As expected, most downloads come from outside the US where the finale aired later or has yet to air on television. Last year, Lost achieved the questionable honor of being the second most-pirated TV-show on BitTorrent. With more than 6 million downloads for a single episode, Lost was only trailing Heroes by a few thousand downloads,” the aforementioned e-zine says.

A regular episode of the show averages about 1.5 million downloads, but that number was reached in a little over a day for the series finale. Even more, these figures are expected to rise throughout this week, as more and more people hear that it’s available and rush to download it, the same report explains. Roughly 15 percent of the total of downloads came from Australia, where the last episode was scheduled to air three days after it went on the air in the US.

“In the first 20 hours after they appeared on BitTorrent, the final two episodes were downloaded a little over 900,000 times, an amount expected to increase to four or five million by the and of the week. As far as we know, this is a new download record for BitTorrent in such a short time frame.One of the main reasons why people turn to BitTorrent for missed TV-shows is because they air significantly later in their home country. In an attempt to take this incentive away Lost’s finale was aired in 59 countries simultaneously, or within 48 hours of the US broadcast,” TorrentFreak also says.