Interestingly
GoT seasons 1 and 2 are available on iTunes in Australia. The latest episodes only take an extra week to show up from when they're first screened in the US. Even so, Australians apparently pirate the show in greater numbers than elsewhere.
Could be because it's $3/episode or it's only standard def or it's a week late. My guess is people find it just as easy to torrent it so don't even bother to look at paid options.
So if Australia is being used by HBO as a test market (quite common for US companies in the past), the stats on offering a paid online option in parallel to cable to reduce piracy don't look compelling to me in this case.
GoT is absolutely huge in Australia - I am continually surprised at the people I know who are well outside the target demographic and watch it. Monday is Game of Thrones night, where everyone watches it, and then talks about it with their mates, which seems to be a significant part of the experience (I'm not a fan of the show personally).
A week later is one week too late - you need to be looking at hours after screening. Australia has a huge pirated TV culture because of how awful our free to air is (pay TV is only really starting to catch on due to exclusive sports licenses, and in terms of getting US content it is almost as terrible as free to air), and everyone just torrents what they want to watch.
Guess we'll find out next week if it's the screening time because season 2 just finished. So from next Monday will there be a drop in Australian GoT torrents because the show is equally available on iTunes? It'd be interesting to see the stats.
The other thing is that on iiNet (Australia's #2 ISP), iTunes downloads aren't counted against download quota. So there's some incentive to buy for people on the basic plans.
If you were really determined to buy it outside Aus I suppose you could buy an iTunes gift card from here and then login to iTunes via an Aussie proxy. Happens surprisingly often in the other direction.
You really would be paying the 'gold price' too as the $AUD is pretty strong due to the price of gold and other commodities mined here.
Could be because it's $3/episode or it's only standard def or it's a week late. My guess is people find it just as easy to torrent it so don't even bother to look at paid options.
So if Australia is being used by HBO as a test market (quite common for US companies in the past), the stats on offering a paid online option in parallel to cable to reduce piracy don't look compelling to me in this case.