Visits to piracy websites have increased 12% in the past four years

Online piracy has existed nearly as long as the internet, and as digital adoption has increased—and the quantity and price of video and audio streaming services has ballooned—the potential lure to use piracy platforms has only increased.

A new analysis from MUSO, a U.K.-based anti-piracy analyst, and Kearney, a consultancy, shows just how significant the scale of piracy is.

The number of visits to online piracy websites reached 141 billion in 2023, accounting for an estimated 386 million visits every single day. That number marks a 12% increase since 2019, according to MUSO.

Most piracy takes place in the U.S. and India, per the analysis, though Europe and Asia Pacific have more per-capita piracy. Across Asia, there were an average of 34 visits to piracy websites in 2023 for each person, compared to 26 piracy visits a year in North America.

“The global rise of video content piracy is concerning,” says Christophe Firth, a partner at Kearney. “However, with a slight adjustment of perspective, it also becomes an opportunity for those media companies that can change their approach to commercialize pirate users and plug the revenue leakage.”

The reason for the increase in piracy visits is down to technology, says Andy Chatterley, founder and CEO of MUSO. “In the past 10 years, and specifically in the past five years, we’ve just had a proliferation of these platforms,” he says. “As a consequence, because they’re behind walled gardens, piracy has increased accordingly and shifted to different technologies.”

Subscription fatigue, where users sign up to multiple platforms in order to access their favorite shows, many of which are spread across a number of different providers, has long been a concern for rank-and-file users. And increasing hostility to users by platforms—including cracking down on password sharing, introducing more adverts, and generally limiting the number of devices able to simultaneously watch shows, while also hiking prices—means that piracy services can often offer a more seamless viewing experience, says Chatterley.

“You could probably make quite a nice direct correlation between streaming services and numbers of subscribers, and increases in piracy and the cost of living and people generally getting subscriptions,” says Chatterley.

Piracy is also becoming normalized for the next billion internet users, if MUSO’s data is anything to go by. Movie piracy in India grew 80% between 2022 and 2023, according to the company’s analysis.

Anime content is one of the hotbeds of global piracy, per the analysis, accounting for 25% of pirated content around the world last year. “The film or TV piracy issue is ultimately driven by demand for content,” Chatterley says. “When accessing that content is maybe harder in certain territories, that must be driving it.”

MUSO ultimately analyzes the scale and scope of piracy worldwide in order to sell its anti-piracy services—and Chatterley believes that the information about who is pirating what where can be used by streaming services in order to drum up business. But it requires a change in mentality from providers from criminalizing those who do it to better understanding their motives. “They’re not pirates,” he says, counterintuitively. “Pirates would be the people who are making content available illegally. Often the audience are not doing it for financial gain—they’re doing it because they want to watch something.”

Chatterley points out that the audience for content that is pirated are often more committed to what they’re watching than those who subscribe to legitimate streaming services, who can sometimes dip in and out of series or movies. “They’re prepared to jump through the extra hoops because they want to watch something on a platform that they currently don’t subscribe to,” he says. “Understanding that audience demand and understanding what they really want to consume can drive huge value.” Indeed, various surveys have shown that pirates are more willing than the average person to spend money on content—if they’re able to get access to it. It’s the latter part that’s the challenge.

The potential to claw back money is huge, too. If the industry only recovered a quarter of the revenue lost to piracy by offering alternatives more palatable to those that seek out piracy websites, it would boost by video on demand market by 4%—or $24 billion. “Cost, availability, and viewer experience are all factors that can drive these users to a piracy site and are all factors that can be addressed by media companies,” says Firth.