Stay-at-Home Orders Cause a Spike in Illegal Content Streaming and Spur the Anti-Piracy Solutions Market to Generate US$172 Million by 2021

Illegal streaming activity hurts the bottom line of content producers, video streaming service providers, and pay TV operators alike.  With more than 17% of worldwide video streaming users streaming content illegally, it’s no wonder that service and content providers are on the hunt to secure their content and protect their coffers. Their mutiny against video piracy will result in a content security market that will generate US$1.9 billion in 2020 alone. Anti-piracy specific solutions will reach US$172 million in 2021 and grow to US$229 million in 2024, representing 10% of the revenue generated by the total content security market, according to a new report from global tech market advisory firm, ABI Research.  

As pay TV and OTT service providers battle to gain market share, they are investing heavily in premium content, advanced CPE, and technologies that support low latency and offer a better user experience. “Despite these efforts to maintain and gain subscribers, service providers are increasingly challenged by content piracy,” notes Khin Sandi Lynn, Industry Analyst at ABI Research. “In fact, there is a bounty of ways to illegally view video content, which is causing service providers to not only lose millions of subscribers each year, but also lose billions in potential revenue.”

Intellectual Property Rights organizations from around world have been warning the industry to batten down its hatches for an increasing level of video content piracy. Live streaming and live sports are at high piracy risk in Europe to the tune of a EUR$941 million loss for providers in the last year. In North America, 7.5 million households are reportedly accessing pirated content, costing providers over US$4 billion per year.  Similarly, in premium content streaming through piracy websites or torrent sites are high in emerging markets in Asia-Pacific; resulting increasing number of consumers terminating legal pay TV services. Lockdowns and stay-at-home orders imposed due to COVID-19 outbreak pushed the level of video content piracy higher. Piracy infringement tracking company Muso reported that there were 36% average daily torrent downloads between January and February 2020. Muso also indicated that significant increase in illegal video download was mainly driven by the COVID-19 lockdowns worldwide.

“Password and credential sharing, file sharing over the internet, and purchasing illegal streaming boxes are just a few ways consumers are currently pillaging video content,” Lynn explains. Although conditional Access Systems (CAS) and Digital Rights Management (DRM) have been used to securely deliver TV content via broadcast and IP networks, ever evolving pirate technologies are putting pressure on to deploy more advanced security solutions.

Watermarking and fingerprinting technologies, alongside emerging anti-piracy services, are the latest tools available to combat piracy. Service providers need to deploy these new technologies and, at the same time, do a proper assessment in partnership with content security solution/anti-piracy vendors on deployment costs, scalability, and time-to-market. Companies such as Irdeto and Synamedia focus on CAS/DRM and piracy tracking and monitoring services using watermarking and credential sharing tracking technologies to help content owners securely deliver content to end users.

“Video service providers need all hands-on deck to make sure content is secured end-to-end. The integration of CAS, DRM, and anti-piracy partnerships for piracy tracking, pirate activity monitoring and response are all required to turn the tide on video piracy,” Lynn concludes.  

These findings are from ABI Research’s DRM and Anti-Piracy Market Trends technology analysis report. This report is part of the company’s Video and Cloud Services research service, which includes research, data, and ABI Insights. Based on extensive primary interviews, Technology Analysis reports present in-depth analysis on key market trends and factors for a specific technology.