Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Priscila Zambotto)
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. Pirate services that offer live TV channels are apparently responsible for more downstream traffic each night than torrent downloads.
Based 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. That amounts to $ 840 million of revenue a year.
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. 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.
Read 18 remaining paragraphs | Comments
