While much of the talk in the broadcast industry on piracy is often focused on sport, a new report from Synamedia has found that entertainment piracy is much more prevalent.
The survey involved 16,000 consumers in the UK, Germany, Italy, United States, Brazil, India, and Thailand.
The report, conducted for Synamedia by Ampere Analysis, found the value of entertainment piracy is three times bigger than sports piracy and that the fragmentation of rights across more services is now impacting piracy in the entertainment market as it has for sports.
Comedy is the most pirated genre of entertainment, driven by titles including Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and Ted Lasso, with half of all pirate viewers streaming comedy illegally.
The research suggests that stopping piracy of a single Hollywood blockbuster can trigger revenues of between $130 million and $280 million in the United States alone. On a film like Spider Man: No Way Home, stopping piracy would lead to potential revenue for a studio streaming service of over $400 million, based on the true annual lifetime value of streaming subscribers, said the report.
If piracy was stopped, sports would create $9.8 billion in potential revenue in the seven surveyed markets, however, an additional $21.8 billion in revenue could be unlocked by converting film and TV pirates to legal services.
According to the research, Germany, Italy and the UK have the lowest levels of piracy. By stopping piracy and converting pirate viewers to legal subscribers in the UK for example, video providers and content owners have the potential to unlock $1.36 billion for entertainment and $1.17 billion for sports annually.
Guy Bisson, executive director and co-founder of Ampere Analysis said: “There is a persistent myth that the pirate consumer won’t pay and will never pay. This research overturns this received wisdom, with more than half of all pirate viewers paying for pirate TV services and 54 per cent also paying for legal services. We already knew sports piracy was a big-money issue, but what surprised us most about this study was the true scale of impact on the US major studios and Hollywood as a whole.”
