Streaming platforms spend billions every year acquiring audiences. Yet one of the biggest threats to that investment along with content costs and subs churn, is piracy.
Piracy isn’t stealing your content. It’s stealing the audience you’ve already paid to acquire.
For years, anti-piracy has been viewed as a defensive investment whose purpose was simply to protect premium content. But as the economics of streaming evolve, it’s becoming clear that piracy is more than a content problem, it’s also a monetization problem.
Today, streaming providers are under increasing pressure to improve profitability. Advertising has become a key revenue driver, and the cost of acquiring premium content, especially major live sports rights like FIFA World Cup 2026™, continues to rise.
In this new environment, anti-piracy deserves to be viewed differently. Protecting content is still essential, but today it’s also about protecting the business built around it.
Piracy Is Growing Again And So Is Its Business Impact
Streaming was once expected to help reduce piracy in two ways. It made legal content easier to access, but it also gave providers much greater visibility into how that content was being consumed. Unlike traditional broadcast, where content is transmitted without direct control over who ultimately receives it, streaming creates individual client sessions that can be monitored and analyzed. This makes it possible to identify suspicious viewing patterns and act on potential piracy at the delivery level. Yet despite these advantages, piracy found its way.
According to piracy monitoring company MUSO, visits to piracy websites increased from 130 billion in 2020 to 216 billion in 2024, with unlicensed streaming accounting for 96% of TV and movie piracy [1]. Fragmentation of content catalogs, subscription fatigue, and rising prices are driving many viewers back to illegal streaming services.
Recent consumer surveys confirm the trend. In The Athletic’s [2] 2025 survey of more than 5,000 football fans, 47% admitted to watching matches through illegal streams, with cost and the need for multiple subscriptions cited as the primary reasons.
Piracy has become a business challenge that directly affects revenue, audience growth, and long-term profitability.
Every Pirated Stream Represents Lost Monetization
Ten years ago, every pirate viewer represented a lost subscription.
Today they also represent a lost advertising impression, a lost first-party data point, a lost recommendation opportunity and potentially years of customer lifetime value.
Advertising-supported services are now driving much of the industry’s growth: premium AVOD revenue increased by 39% in 2024, reaching $14.3 billion, while 71% of new streaming subscribers over the past nine quarters opted for ad-supported plans.[3]
As advertising becomes a larger share of streaming revenue, every viewer who turns to an illegal stream represents more than a lost subscription, they also represent lost advertising revenue, valuable audience insights, and future monetization opportunities.
Protecting Revenue Means Protecting the Viewer Journey
Traditional anti-piracy efforts have largely focused on detecting illegal streams, issuing takedown requests, and blocking unauthorized access. While these measures remain essential, especially during premium live events, they are only part of the equation.
Today’s streaming providers also need to protect the value of every legitimate viewer. That means identifying suspicious activity in real time, disrupting illegal redistribution before it spreads, and doing so without compromising the viewing experience for paying subscribers/ valued viewers .
This is particularly critical for live sports, where content has its greatest value while the event is taking place. Every minute an illegal stream remains online is another minute of missed advertising opportunities and reduced engagement with legitimate audiences.
The Audience Is the Real Asset
Streaming providers invest billions every year in premium content, exclusive sports rights, marketing campaigns, and customer acquisition. The objective isn’t simply to distribute content, it is to attract viewers, keep them engaged, and build long-term relationships that generate recurring revenue.
Piracy breaks that relationship. Every viewer who turns to an illegal stream is no longer part of the platform’s ecosystem. They can’t be monetized through subscriptions or advertising, they can’t be measured, and they can’t be engaged with personalized experiences or future offers. Anti-piracy helps protect the value of legitimate distribution by keeping content consumption within environments where providers have visibility, control, and the ability to monetize it.
As streaming business models continue to evolve, protecting legitimate audiences may become just as important as protecting premium rights.
The discussion around anti-piracy is therefore shifting. Success is no longer measured only by the number of illegal streams taken down, but by the ability to preserve audiences and safeguard monetization opportunities. Platforms can maximize the return on content investments only if keeping and growing their community.
The value of anti-piracy lies in limiting unauthorized access to premium content and protecting the legitimate services that have invested in bringing that content to viewers.
The Answer: How Can Anti-Piracy Generate Revenue?
So, can anti-piracy generate revenue? Not directly. But it can protect the value that streaming providers work so hard to create.
The real asset isn’t just the content, it’s the audience. Once viewers leave for illegal streams, they’re no longer part of the platform’s journey. That relationship is broken, and with it goes the opportunity to keep them engaged over time.
This is why anti-piracy is no longer just about blocking illegal streams. It’s about protecting legitimate audiences without compromising their viewing experience.
At Broadpeak, the approach goes beyond simply identifying suspicious internet traffic and blocking access. By detecting piracy at the video level, we can gain deeper visibility into unauthorized redistribution and respond within the video stream itself.
This opens the door to more targeted countermeasures: from introducing controlled disruptions that are harder for pirate services to immediately circumvent, to displaying messages that can guide viewers back toward legitimate ways to access the content.
In this way, anti-piracy can move beyond simply stopping an illegal stream: it can help protect existing revenue and, in some cases, create an opportunity to recover viewers who are currently consuming content outside the legitimate service.
This is particularly relevant for live content, where there is only a limited window to act. Broadpeak’s anti-piracy solutions can intervene directly at the video level, giving service providers new ways to reach viewers while they are watching an unauthorized stream. Instead of simply blocking the content, the experience can be disrupted to display a message or banner directing viewers to the legitimate service. By making it easy to subscribe or purchase access, service providers have an opportunity to convert those viewers while their interest in the content is at its highest.
There is also a longer-term value to consider: Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). When unauthorized alternatives are disrupted, some viewers may turn to the legitimate service for a single event or season and leave soon after, while others may stay and become long-term customers. In those cases, the value of an effective anti-piracy intervention can extend well beyond the initial purchase, generating recurring revenue throughout the customer relationship.
Because in the end, the value of anti-piracy isn’t only in stopping an illegal stream. It’s also in what can happen next: giving viewers a simple path back to legitimate content and, potentially, turning a moment of disruption into the start of a lasting customer relationship.
[1] MUSO piracy data, cited in Gabriel V. Rindborg, Can’t pay, won’t pay: impoverished streaming services are driving viewers back to piracy, The Guardian, August 14, 2025. Also discussed in Jason Hellerman, Has the Streaming Era Caused More Piracy?, No Film School, August 18, 2025.
[2] Adam Leventhal, The Athletic’s streaming survey: Almost half of respondents admit to using illegal streams, The Athletic, November 17, 2025. © The Athletic 2025
[3] David Naffis. Research and Antenna data, summarized in AVOD vs SVOD: Which is growing faster? (Q4 2025). Premium AVOD revenue reached $14.3 billion in 2024 and 71% of net new subscribers selected ad-supported plans. © Adwave 2025
[4] Broadpeak Anti-Piracy Solutions @Broadpeak
[5] broadpeak.io Anti-Piracy Blog: Why Streaming Piracy Requires a Different CDN Approach @broadpeak.io
