The late-May 2013 debut of the fourth season of Arrested Development – the Ron Howard-narrated sitcom about the dysfunctional Bluth family – on Netflix has led to a lower-than-average number of illegal downloads, the website TorrentFreak has reported. The programme was cancelled in 2006 following consistently low ratings in the United States, but has developed a strong following since the advent and expanded availability of streaming video services.

According to TorrentFreak, 100,000 people downloaded the show via BitTorrent within the first 24 hours of release, and 175,000 within the first 48 hours. The numbers include only BitTorrent downloads and not other methods of watching such as spoofing an IP address through a virtual private network. By comparison, TorrentFreak says that more than a million people illegally downloaded the season three finale of Game of Thrones within 24 hours after it aired on HBO.

Industry watchers are paying particular attention to Arrested due to its streaming-only availability. Netflix, which released all 15 episodes of Arrested simultaneously on May 26, is a streaming video service available in the Americas and northern Europe but not Asia or Australia. The company’s roots are in delivering DVD rentals through the postal system, a business model which it continues to offer in the US.

Netflix officials have said in interviews that they believe the long-term answer to piracy of movies and television programmes is selling such content at an attractive price point. “One of the things is we get ISPs to publicize their connection speeds – and when we launch in a territory the BitTorrent traffic drops as the Netflix traffic grows. So I think people do want a great experience and they want access – people are mostly honest. The best way to combat piracy isn’t legislatively or criminally but by giving good options,” Netflix chief content office Ted Sarandos said in a May 2013 interview with Stuff magazine.

According to TorrentFreak, 18% of the Arrested downloads were from the US – where a Netflix account costs a mere US$7 – with 15% from Australia, where Netflix, and the Bluth family, are not available. Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden and India rounded out the top six.

What remains unclear is whether the significantly smaller number of downloads than, say, Game of Thrones, is because Arrested is online at an affordable price or because it has a significantly smaller fan base than expected. Only time will tell if, as is true in the Arrested universe, there’s always money in the banana stand for Netflix.