HBO officially told a Brooklyn bar to stop hosting ‘Game of Thrones’ viewing parties.
Every Sunday night, ‘Game of Thrones’ fans gather in Brooklyn, New York dressed up in costume and head over to Videology where they watch the latest episode of ‘Game of Thrones’ as it airs live on HBO.
Apparently, HBO is not too happy. The company has sent a cease and desist letter to Videology, telling them to stop showing ‘Game of Thrones,” according to reports.
HBO did the same thing with cease and desist letters when bars and restaurants were throwing “Sopranos” parties back in 2002. It appears as though HBO tries to stop this public showing of its content.
From Yahoo:
When we asked about this cease and desist letter, a company spokesperson told us, “As a pay subscription service, HBO should not be made available in public establishments. When it does happen, it is of particular concern when there is an attempt to profit off the programming. This is nothing new as we have taken such actions for well over a decade.”
“They said that it’s not allowed to be shown in a public setting,” the bar’s co-owner, James Leet, told Zarum, adding that this is the first time the bar has been asked not to screen a particular show. Videology screens other popular shows, like Mad Men, too.
Watching GoT at a bar is a fairly New York thing to do. There are a number of other bars that throw a G0T party each Sunday, and it’s not clear if HBO has reached out to all of them yet.
But it wouldn’t be surprising if the company did.
HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ is already the most pirated show of 2015. All of the seasons of ‘Game of Thrones’ is illegally downloaded on average 116,000 times a day. In addition, ‘Game of Thrones’ first four episodes were leaked online last week.
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