TV/Movie Piracy To Soar Over Next 5 Years

TV and movie online piracy will continue to soar, and is estimated to climb to $51.6 billion in five years, according to one report.

Digital TV Research says revenues lost to online piracy will nearly double between 2016 and 2022. The study covers 138 countries, analyzing online TV episodes and movies, but not sports or pay TV programming.

The U.S. will remain the country with the greatest piracy losses at $11.6 billion forecast by 2022 -- up from $8.9 billion in 2016, a 30% gain.

Next is China, which will see a doubling of its piracy issues in terms of revenue lost: It will rise from $4.2 billion to $9.8 billion.

In that year, India’s piracy issues will grow to $3.1 billion (from $700 million) and Brazil will grow to $2.6 billion (from $1.5 billion).

The top five countries represent 63% of the 2016 total, dropping to 55% by 2022. Eight countries will record revenue losses of more than $1 billion in 2022 -- double the total in 2016.

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However, the news is not all bad, the study says. Revenue for legitimate TV episodes and movies surpassed online piracy losses beginning in 2013 -- $46.5 billion versus $31.8 billion.

The amount will climb to $83.4 million legitimate OTT revenues versus $51.6 billion in 2022. “The gap between the two measures is widening,” the study says.

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