[talentdeficit]

Here's why HBO requires you to subscribe to their channel to watch Game of Thrones.

If you watch Game of Thrones, maybe you'll also watch Veep or Girls or Eastbound & Down or Life's Too Short. You might notice that HBO staggers their series so they overlap for roughly half their run. The Sopranos and The Wire never ran in lockstep, The Wire would start roughly halfway through The Sopranos run. They're trying to get you to continuously subscribe, rather than just subscribe for the 13 weeks Game of Thrones is on.

I know, you're too smart to fall for that, you're just gonna PVR Game of Thrones and stop recording exactly when the episode ends. You're never going to see anything except Game of Thrones no matter what HBO does. You, however, are still atypical. Maybe the day will come where HBO's trick doesn't work and their subscribers routinely cancel and resubscribe so it's most advantageous for them, but for now it works well enough that offering Game of Thrones a la carte is a money losing proposition for them. The sales they'll get from MG Siegler and yourself will not offset the subscribers they'll lose who would rather just pay for HBO continuously than go without Game of Thrones.

HBO (and other content producers) may be stubborn and short sighted, but they are not stupid. They've run the numbers. If you want to change their minds, you have to change the numbers and, regrettably, that means you have to boycott them completely. Pirating their content just signals it's valuable and HBO is right to keep availability costly (whether through direct pricing or obnoxious distribution terms).

[jiggy2011]

They're trying to get you to continuously subscribe, rather than just subscribe for the 13 weeks Game of Thrones is on.

This may have worked in the 90s but people have other options now and they expect other options.

Pirating their content just signals it's valuable and HBO is right to keep availability costly (whether through direct pricing or obnoxious distribution terms).

I think that's the point though, people do find it valuable and may be happy to pay a premium price for it but they don't want to have to pay for a ton of other stuff especially on a monthly subscription.

If it is popular then there is no real reason they should be losing money on it, I think the piracy signals an untapped market.

It's arguably worse for those in the UK, if we want to see game of thrones then we have to fork out for a sky subscription which adds yet another set top box to our already overburdened collection and puts the money into Rupert Murdoch's pocket (there are many who would feel that piracy is a morally superior option to that).