Every new Premier League season starts with a warning about the cost of piracy, and this year is no different.
BeStreamWise, the anti-piracy campaign backed by Sky, the Premier League, FACT, the BBC and the UK Intellectual Property Office, among others, released a new report this week to highlight the ongoing challenge.
The campaign commissioned consultancy WPI Economics to put a number on illegal streaming. This resulted in a report titled “The Price of Piracy,” which estimates that illegal streaming results in £1.35 billion in missed revenue by UK broadcasters every year. That figure is then translated into 10,400 lost jobs and £366 million in missing tax income.
To stress the point, the report highlights that missed taxes could pay for a variety of public services. The £366 million could pay 9,400 qualified NHS nurses, for example, or it could provide 140 million free school meals to children.
A £1.35 Billion Poll
The billion-pound estimate is based on a poll of 2,501 UK adults, conducted in February. In this survey, almost a third (31%) said they had used illegal streaming in the previous three months. Extrapolating this percentage to the entire population suggests that 16.8 million people could be video pirates.
To find out how this then resulted in £1.35 billion missed revenue, we reached out to BeStreamWise, which informed us that it is based on a scenario where piracy is no longer an option.
BeStreamWise explained that the respondents who admitted to pirating were asked which services they would be willing to pay for, if they were no longer able to access pirate services. WPI Economics then multiplied these answers by the average cost of the services, before extrapolating it to the entire population.
The campaign stresses that the report only counted people who said they were willing to pay in this hypothetical scenario.
Put differently, the £1.35 billion does not measure lost sales. It is the extrapolated subscription fee that pirates said they would pay, at full price, if piracy ceased to exist tomorrow. That is then translated to tax revenue, which can pay for the 9,400 nurses.
Pirate’s Pinky Promise
The calculation is straightforward on paper, but it’s not without caveats. While self-proclaimed pirates may be just as trustworthy as the general population, behavioral research has shown that people generally say they would pay more than they actually do.
There are ways to correct for this gap, which economists refer to as a hypothetical bias, but BeStreamWise’s spokesperson informed TorrentFreak that the WPI study did not apply any correction. The survey answers were taken as given.
The lack of a discount factor is not unique in piracy research, and previous studies have sometimes put pirates in a positive spotlight because of it. However, it definitely signals that the £1.35 billion is far from guaranteed
In fact, the same poll shows that many pirates are still primarily driven by saving costs. The most common justification for pirating was that it’s cheaper than paying (38%), followed by convenience (31%) and a desire to avoid subscriptions (24%). Over half (52%) said they are likely to continue pirating regardless.
Social Media as Primary Piracy Source
One of the most surprising findings of the survey is that social media is the top source to access pirated content. This covers all forms of video piracy, not just streaming.
“[The research] shows that a majority (54%) of active illegal streamers access illegal content via social media platforms, compared to just 26% who access using purchased devices and illegal subscription services, and 28% streaming or downloading via unofficial websites.”
“Less popular methods included downloading content via torrents or cloud sharing services (15%), and illegally buying logins or passwords for legal services (7%),” the report adds.
The survey’s definition of piracy is quite broad. It includes “Watching via social media platforms” as a separate category, next to using a VPN to access content only available in other countries.
This means that someone watching a single (unauthorized) clip of a goal or TV-show on X or Instagram is considered an illegal streamer. How the questions were worded is not known to us, because BeStreamWise has not made the polling data available to us.
An ‘Oven-Ready’ Solution
Putting a price on the piracy problem is only part of the report, as it also offers solutions. The first recommendation is for the UK Government to amplify existing consumer awareness campaigns through its official channels.
The prime candidate for this, according to the BeStreamWise-commissioned report, is BeStreamWise. These awareness campaigns could also focus on the estimated £270m in harms consumers face through malware, fraud and identity theft.
“Amplifying BeStreamWise’s data and insights would be an ‘oven-ready’ move that would be game-changing in signposting the risks of piracy, including the potential fraud and data security risks, and would begin to combat the £270m of financial harms illegal streamers face each year,” the report reads.
The second recommendation calls for a voluntary cross-sector framework, in which online platforms, connectivity providers and content services work together to combat online piracy. These efforts could be overseen by the UK government.
The report does not propose new legislation or blocking powers. Instead, it argues that current enforcement has failed because consumers are not aware of the risks.
While awareness campaigns and voluntary agreements may help to nudge some people in the right direction, rightsholders should not count on getting a significant share of the £1.35 billion pirates promised anytime soon.
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A copy of The Price of Piracy report, produced by WPI Economics for BeStreamWise, is available here (pdf).
