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The number of cable and satellite TV subscriptions has been dropping for years due to rising prices and Internet-based alternatives, both legal and otherwise. That includes live sports events, which can often only be viewed legally by purchasing a traditional pay-TV subscription.īesides live sports, Sandvine found significant usage of pirate TV services to view premium television (like HBO's Game of Thrones), news channels, and international content. The pirate services attempt to "replicate the live television experience offered by cable and satellite providers," Sandvine wrote. The 6.5 percent figure "is a measurement of subscribers who were communicating with known IPTV services during that time," and could include people with active subscriptions as well as "people who have dormant subscriptions, or may just subscribe to day passes" to watch certain content, a Sandvine spokesperson told Ars. Sandvine's findings are based on a 30-day period in August and September. Sandvine is a vendor that sells equipment to consumer broadband providers to help them manage network congestion. "Our research reveals that across multiple tier-1 North American fixed access networks, 6.5 percent of households are communicating with known TV piracy services, and these services accounted for more than 6 percent of downstream traffic in the peak evening hours," Sandvine's new report said. But if all of those people instead purchased a legal TV package for $50 per month, that would amount to another $4.2 billion revenue a year for North American pay-TV providers, the report said. We don't know how many people using pirate services would purchase a traditional cable or satellite TV package if the piracy option didn't exist.


That amounts to $840 million of revenue a year.
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Pirate services that offer live TV channels are apparently responsible for more downstream traffic each night than torrent downloads.īased on these figures, there may be 7 million US and Canadian subscribers to pirate TV services that generally cost about $10 a month, the report by Sandvine said. TV piracy services are being used by about 6.5 percent of North American households with broadband access, potentially costing legitimate TV providers billions of dollars a year, a new analysis found.
