Could more than a billion viewers tune in next week to watch the beginning of the end of HBO's Game of Thrones seen on M-Net (DStv 101) when the 8th season starts? Well - more than a billion actually if it was somehow possible to count the millions of pirate viewers who will be watching illegally.
The final season of Game of Thrones is set to arrive at 03:00 on Monday morning 15 April in South Africa and Africa with M-Net that will broadcast it Express from the US at the same time as in the United States and thereafter at 22:00 on Mondays.
New episodes of Game of Thrones will also be available on MultiChoice's DStv Now Catch Up service for DStv subscribers, as well as on its subscription video-on-demand service (SVOD) Showmax, that also carries the previous 7 season back-catalogue of the fantasy drama series.
On Monday morning at 03:00 many South African viewers and fans will join in the global watch phenomenon when M-Net will have special VIP Experience big-screen celebration screenings at Nu Metro cinemas in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg where Diageo's Johnnie Walker limited-edition White Walker whiskey will be poured.
Back after a break of over a year and a half before which it was constantly the most illegally downloaded and shared TV series in the world, Game of Thrones is likely to shatter both linear ratings, time-delayed viewing, and pirate download records as the epic series swoops back - special-effects dragons included - to enthral viewers in more than 170 countries from next week.
An expected one billion viewers worldwide are expected to tune in for the Game of Thrones return, although it will be impossible to immediately calculate how many millions more will be downloading, torrenting and sharing illegal copies across file-sharing sites from the moment the first of the final 6 episodes has been shown.
Although no new Game of Thrones episodes aired for close to two years, the Game of Thrones fanbase didn't diminish. In fact, ironically, it has grown massively thanks to the very video streaming services many say are killing linear TV and so-called, must-see "appointment television".
During the past two years, many more people globally have been able to start watching, following and catching up with the show, getting to the same "level" as original fans of the books, and existing viewers who watched from the beginning.
That brings added demand from an even bigger potential audience as Game of Thrones episodes - much more easily accessible nowadays in a digital form - allowed awareness and interest in the series to marinade and simmer even more in a slow-bubbling pop culture stew that just needs a quick reheat to reach boiling point.
The same effect can be seen and is causing the rabid interest and record-shattering box office sales for Disney and Marvel's Avengers: Endgame film releasing at the end of this month.
People buying tickets now are not just moviegoers who went to cinemas when the Marvel films started with Iron Man in 2008 but people who discovered them along the way after their theatre-run during the whole past decade and started following the story through the various interlocking films of the carefully nurtured franchise.
"Game of Thrones had a global reach like nothing before it on TV," writes Rolling Stone magazine, with its TV critic Alan Sepinwall saying "It does things you never expected TV to be able to do in terms of dragons flying and burning up entire armies, and zombies storming down a mountain".
"It's viscerally thrilling in a way that almost nothing on TV has ever been before. Game of Thrones is the only true phenomenon."
