Piracy has been around for as long as the internet has and continues to be a problem today. Despite content being readily available from legitimate cable and online sources, many viewers still choose to watch their media and sports illegally. In fact, a new study shows that sports piracy is costing service providers and rights holders about $28.3 billion dollars in revenue each year.
Synamedia and Ampere Analysis’s report is aimed at finding out what it would take to get those pirate viewers to switch to a legitimate service, aka “the converter cohort.” Surprisingly, 74% of the sample of more than 6000 sports fans across 10 markets say they would be willing to switch to a legitimate alternative under the right circumstances. The terms of those customers switching to something legitimate would be having an alternative available, or if the illegal streams are giving them problems or become unreliable.
If legitimate service providers and rights holders could harness that pirated revenue, Ampere predicts that about $5.4 billion of it would go straight to streaming revenue.
Switching would mean turning to either OTT Streaming sports services or pay-TV, something 40% say they’d choose the former while 60% say they would opt for the latter when it comes to sports. Currently, more than half of the converter cohort are already paying for their pirate service, so it would make sense for them to just put that money towards a legitimate option. And 57% of those likely to switch already pay for a legitimate service as well and supplement with pirated sites.
There are plenty of legitimate streaming options when it comes to offering Live Sports. fuboTV, YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, and more are all great options. In fact, fuboTV is centered around offering a wide variety of sports with packages starting at just $65 a month.