Fans of television shows like to catch their newest episodes as quickly and as close to live as possible. If that’s difficult to do, they head to places where they can illegally download the shows.

So which shows are the most-pirated of the spring 2013 season? HBO’s Game of Thrones takes the crown.

1 Game of Thrones (5.2 million downloads)
2 The Big Bang Theory (2.9 million)
3 How I Met Your Mother (2.85 million)
4 The Walking Dead (2.7 million)
5 Hannibal (2.1 million)
6 Vikings (1.9 million)
7 Arrow (1.85 million)
8 The Vampire Diaries (1.8 million)
9 Modern Family (1.75 million)
10 Revenge (1.7 million)

Note that the above numbers indicate the average number of downloads per episode.

Game of Thrones’ high download numbers are easy to explain. The wildly popular HBO show is only available live and through legal online streaming for paying subscribers who also own a cable subscription. In addition, new episodes of Game of Thrones are not released for digital download the day after they air like most shows.

Making it even more tempting to illegally download the episodes, Game of Thrones director David Petrarca is on record saying that the show’s high illegal download numbers do less harm than good. Petrarca believes the extra amount of buzz online for the show thanks to these downloaders helps spread the word about HBO, thus encouraging people to pay for a HBO subscription.

As for the high download numbers of other shows, many viewers may be dedicated fans overseas who cannot watch episodes until months after their United States airings.

We’re a bit surprised that Downton Abbey hasn’t cracked the top 10 of this list when you consider the fact that the show airs in the United States months after it does in the United Kingdom. Maybe it’s because many of Downton’s viewers are made up of an older audience who don’t mind catching new episodes on PBS (and are less tuned into social media).

Thanks, Torrent Freak.