• by Wayne Friedman , December 8, 2016

Video piracy is looking more legitimate to consumers -- and growing -- with sports content a big driver.

In a recent global report on piracy, Irdeto, a digital platform security company, says: “While some consumers are aware that they are purchasing pirated content, others do not realize that the subscriptions they are purchasing are pirate operations.”

Data from SimilarWeb, a digital market intelligence company, shows growth in global traffic from pirated sites  -- now 16,460,000 visits per month to the top 100 pirate IPTV suppliers. 

In the U.S., this amounts to 3.7 million visits a month; in the U.K. it comes to million site visits per month.

Irdeto says a typical pirate supplier offers an average of 174 channels, with some illegal services offering more than 1,000 channels. A pirated TV service can be priced at a very low $16.20 per month -- versus the average cable pay TV provider customer cost of $103.10 a month.

Irdeto says sports is a major content area for video pirated services, with half of the top ten channels sports-related.

Authors of the study note: “Despite the illegal nature of the offering, these low costs and the compelling content provided sway consumers to choose a pirate device over legal cable, satellite or OTT services.”