A further study carried out by Digital TV Research predicted that digital TV and online movie piracy across 138 countries will nearly double from 2016 to 2022, meaning that there could be as much as $51.6 billion in lost revenue for content piracy owners.

According to a recent piracy research presentation by our partner Friend MTS, the most impacted segments from piracy are premium sports and entertainment — with TV revenue loss estimates approaching $35bn in 2018 (based on a Digital TV Research estimate of 2018 global TV revenues). Given the magnitude of these losses, it is not surprising that advertising revenue is also suffering: “It’s a worldwide problem that affects the whole chain from rights owners to pay-TV platforms. Piracy is now a sophisticated, industrial scale problem, with more than 3,000 black market pirate services. Recent estimates show the top 600 pirate sites generating $260 million of advertising revenue.” That’s revenue lost by legitimate sources.