After years of decline, piracy of series and films is on the rise again

Faced with increasingly restrictive offers from legal streaming services, many users are now turning to piracy, whether downloading or illegal streaming sites.

Are we already witnessing the twilight of the age of streaming? Services like Disney+, Peacock or Paramount+ lose billions of dollars each year, and more established offers like Netflix now offer increasingly restrictive subscriptions to users, including the implementation of advertisements or the impossibility of sharing their content. account. The result is a predictable increase in visits to illegal streaming or download sites in recent years.

Movie piracy increased by 39% in 2022

Bloomberg makes a rather worrying inventory of the situation regarding a mass return to illegal downloading linked to series and films. Thus, in 2022, film piracy increased by 39%, while it benefited from an increase of 9% for series. In 2020, global visits to illegal download sites may have fallen to 104 billion; in 2023, this figure has increased significantly to 141 billion.

Furthermore, some illegal streaming sites go so far as to make $2 billion in profit thanks to subscription offers (less expensive and more comprehensive in their offering) and the implementation of advertisements. These sites have a considerable impact on the industry: the American Chamber of Commerce estimates that the country’s economy suffers a loss of 30 billion dollars in annual income because of them.

A consulting company, Parks Associates, also predicts that these streaming sites could have an impact reaching losses of 113 billion dollars over the next 2 years. Illegal streaming services have in fact reached the record figure of 215 billion visits during the year 2022, and if we consider the evolution of the streaming market, increasingly restrictive among users, this figure is definitely expected to grow in the near future.

The paradigm shift in streaming services involved?

These increasing figures are far from surprising if we take stock of the different streaming services. Last year, some of them increased their prices, implemented offers highlighting various advertisements, and made it impossible to share account passwords with friends and/or family. Not to mention that the number of accessible services is growing, which sometimes makes it complicated to find which platform corresponds to this or that series… The paradigm around streaming services is changing, and the restrictions are becoming more and more punitive for users, who end up opting for a solution that is both less expensive and potentially simpler, although illegal: illegal downloading.

Just yesterday, Disney+ and Hulu, for example, were able to announce that they were following Netflix in the restriction linked to account sharing, starting March 12. In other words, it becomes necessary to have up to 3 or 4 subscriptions to different services in order to benefit from a substantial catalog, with the potential to juggle between services each month. And inevitably, the budget allocated to entertainment continues to increase, especially since subscriptions do not only affect cinema or series, but also video games, music, etc. The bill is getting bigger and bigger every month, and inevitably, faced with the loss of simplicity linked to the use of streaming, many are now choosing piracy.

Source : Bloomberg, Thehustle