Film and TV piracy sites see nearly 40% surge in traffic during coronavirus lockdown, data reveals
The lockdown has disrupted lives, work, and everything in between and its ripple effects are being felt across various million-dollar industries. Among those severely affected by the pandemic is the global entertainment industry with ongoing productions being halted and filming companies scrambling to finish post-production. Entertainment companies have evidently incurred heavy losses in the process.
Adding to this major impediment, London-based digital piracy analysts Muso has released new data that shows unprecedented surges in traffic on piracy sites, as stay-at-home-orders have boosted online entertainment streaming. The new study, published on April 27, has shown a double-digit hike in online piracy across Europe and North America.
Muso's findings said that visiting illegal streaming and downloading sites, to access films and television series, jumped by 41.4 percent in the US and by 42.5 in the UK. The data sampled made comparisons between the stats from the last week of February to the last week of March. The digital analyst also noticed a similar pattern across the rest of Europe and concluded that the traffic on film piracy sites had risen to 62 percent in India, 66 percent in Italy, 50.4 percent in Spain, and 35.5 percent in Germany in the same time frame.
The hike on piracy also roughly coincides with the imposition of the pandemic lockdown in various nations.
Germany issued its stay-at-home orders on March 22, and the UK followed suit imposing the same the following day on March 23. Italy, which became the European epicenter, seeing as how the pandemic had grievously impacted the country, issued its strict national lockdown on February 22 and Spain followed on March 14. The two countries have been under lockdown, longer than the other affected European countries as well as the US, but there isn't a clear reason as to whether this may have contributed to the hike in piracy figures.
Both Spain and Italy have traditionally had high rates of piracy in contrast to the rest of Europe.
In the US, the lockdown and stay-at-home orders were imposed depending on the seriousness of the situation in each state as the COVID-19 pandemic began to take shape. By March 31, however, three-quarters of the country had been shut down and quarantined, with President Donald Trump declaring a state of national emergency.
The data compiled by Muso found that there was "an unprecedented increase" in visits to online film piracy sites in late March, which the piracy watchdog ascribed to the self-isolation and stay-at-home measures. "As more countries enforced lockdown and required citizens to self-isolate, demand for content via piracy grew exponentially," the report said. A point to note is that the hike in piracy figures correspond with the rise in demand for legal online subscription streaming serviced during the pandemic lockdown.
In the past week, Netflix published its viewing figures that illustrated the streaming giant had a record increase of 15.8 million subscribers in its first quarter of the year, which was again attributed to the stay-at-home measures. "Piracy or unlicensed consumption trends are closely linked to paid-for or licensed content," Andy Chatterley, CEO of Muso said in the report. "So, just as Netflix has seen large subscriber gains, we have seen a significant spike in visits to film piracy sites."
Even Disney's streaming service, Disney Plus, has garnered over 50 million new subscribers now since its launch some five months ago. “People will find a way to watch what they want to watch,” Chatterley said. “Piracy demand is going to escalate.”
A detailed evaluation in Muso's report showed some conspicuous differences between the behavior pattern of pirates and subscription streamers. Each country taken into consideration in the research noted that visits to television piracy sites overshadowed those to film piracy sites. In the US, Muso reported 601.3 million total visits to television piracy sites at the end of March and 137.4 million visits to film piracy sites.
However, the visits have only mildly increased by 8.7 percent to television piracy sits in the US, in comparison to the 41.4 percent spike in film piracy site visits. All in all, Muso counted a total of 1.1 billion visited illegal television and film sites during the month of March in the US.
One reason for the disparity could be the lack of live television sports which are unavailable on piracy sites, with all virtual live sports having been halted or canceled due to the pandemic. While legal streaming sites like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and more continue providing viewers with a myriad of content, traditional broadcasters and cable services also continue to provide content.
Although, cinemas remain shut all around the world and most theatrical releases have either been suspended, postponed to a later date, or digitally released on specific online streaming platforms.