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Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Piracy is not rising everywhere. MUSO estimates that visits to piracy websites fell worldwide in 2025, even as television remained the largest piracy category. The more defensible story is that streaming has revived some of piracy’s old appeal: viewers again face scattered catalogs, rising costs, regional gaps and separate paywalls—especially for live sports.
Netflix did not single-handedly cause that shift, and the company is not at a financial dead end. But the original streaming bargain—broad, simple access in one place—has become harder to deliver as services compete for exclusive rights and add new restrictions.
What the piracy numbers actually show
MUSO recorded an estimated 185.6 billion visits to piracy websites across five sectors worldwide in 2025, down 14.2% from the year before. Television was still the largest category. Those figures measure visits in MUSO’s dataset, not unique people, completed streams, downloads or lost purchases. A fall in tracked website traffic also cannot rule out shifts to channels the dataset does not capture.
European Union data paints a picture of stabilization, not a universal rebound. EUIPO estimated about 10.2 accesses to pirated content per internet user per month in 2023, including 5.1 accesses for television. These are EU averages; an access is not necessarily a unique person or a completed viewing. Streaming was the most common method for pirated TV content in the EU.
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So “piracy is back” is best understood as a return of its appeal in particular situations, not proof that worldwide piracy volume is climbing. TV, live sports, illegal IPTV and hard-to-find titles merit separate attention. Monitoring firms also use different methods, so their traffic estimates should not be treated as directly comparable without checking definitions.
MUSO’s 2025 report and EUIPO’s EU executive summary provide the figures and their geographic context.
Why piracy is regaining appeal
1. Fragmented catalogs bring back the one-title, one-paywall problem
Streaming’s early advantage was consolidation: one service offered a broad catalog without the friction of searching across rentals, downloads and cable channels. Now film and television rights are divided among subscription platforms, broadcasters, regional services and digital stores. A household following several shows or a mix of films and sports may need several subscriptions, while a title can leave one service when a licensing deal expires.
There is a difference between finding that a title exists somewhere and having it included in a service a viewer already pays for. A film may be available only to rent, a catalog may differ by country, and sports rights may be split among multiple providers. Aggregators can make legal availability easier to find, but they do not combine those subscriptions into one library.
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EUIPO identifies legal-content availability as one factor associated with infringement. That supports treating fragmentation as a plausible incentive, not claiming that it alone caused piracy to rise.
2. The total cost can feel worse when cheaper plans include trade-offs
The consumer complaint is often about value, not simply the monthly price. A lower-cost plan may include advertising or limits; premium formats or live events may cost extra; and content can disappear while a subscription remains active. Add several services together and the relevant number is the household’s cost for the programs it actually watches—not the advertised price of one platform.
Netflix’s filing for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, reported global monthly paid-plan equivalents ranging from $1 to $38 and extra-member subaccounts from $2 to $10. Those are worldwide ranges, not a U.S. price list; country, plan and availability vary. The filing also reported 13% year-over-year revenue growth in the second quarter of 2026, with growth driven in part by membership, price increases and advertising revenue. That is evidence of commercial growth, not proof that subscribers feel the service is worth more.
Some consumers may be priced out; others can afford subscriptions but dislike paying repeatedly for an experience they consider unstable or inconvenient. Those are different motivations, and neither establishes that all dissatisfied subscribers turn to piracy.
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3. “Available” may not mean available here, now, or in a subscription
Licensing and release schedules can leave viewers waiting months for a program available elsewhere. A film may have a digital release in one country but not another. Older, niche, foreign or canceled titles may lack a convenient legal streaming home, while a live event loses much of its value if the legal option is unavailable at the time it happens.
In these cases, the practical comparison may be immediate access versus a delay, a separate rental, or no local option—not simply legal versus illegal. Still, a title’s presence on an unauthorized service does not prove there is no legal option: some viewers choose piracy even when a title is licensed because they want a particular file, subtitle, device compatibility or playback experience.
EUIPO’s findings connect the volume of legal offerings with piracy behavior, but they do not show that every unavailable title leads to infringement. Availability varies by country and changes over time. Viewers can check a legal availability guide such as JustWatch’s U.S. search before adding a service; its listings do not make a title available or guarantee that it is included in a subscription rather than offered as a rental or purchase.
4. Subscriptions provide access, not a permanent personal copy
A streaming subscription generally grants access under the service’s terms rather than unrestricted ownership of a file. Access can end when a title leaves a catalog, a service closes, an account is suspended, or a subscription lapses. Viewers who want offline files, a local library, specific subtitles or audio formats, or playback across devices may see unauthorized copies as more flexible.
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That perceived flexibility comes with real risks. The U.S. Trade Representative’s 2025 Notorious Markets review warns that piracy-enabling sites can expose consumers to malware and scams. Fraudulent payment pages, malicious advertising, identity theft and poor-quality files are further reasons not to treat a search result or social-media link as trustworthy. The government’s market list is not a judicial finding against every market it names.
5. Live sports make fragmentation more urgent
For a live match, waiting for a later release is not a substitute. Rights can be divided by league, season, territory and platform; fans may face separate subscriptions, add-ons or regional restrictions. Illegal IPTV packages can appear to restore the all-in-one bundle, but IPTV itself is not synonymous with piracy: legitimate television services also use internet protocol. The concern here is unauthorized IPTV.
EUIPO reported that visits to pirate IPTV registration websites in the EU rose 10% in 2023. It also estimated that up to 1% of EU internet users may have subscribed to illegal IPTV over a two-year period, excluding people who had subscribed earlier. These are EU findings, not U.S. estimates. The USTR’s 2025 review separately highlights illicit live-sports streaming and the infrastructure that supports piracy.
Live-event piracy can be especially damaging to rights holders, but a traffic count still does not establish how many viewers would otherwise have paid. One visit is not automatically one lost ticket, subscription or purchase.
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Did Netflix cause piracy to return—and are streamers at a dead end?
No single company caused the current incentives. Netflix helped popularize the model in which a broad, easy-to-use subscription could make unauthorized sources less attractive. As competitors launched services, rights holders pulled content into separate catalogs, and the market became more fragmented. Netflix and others have also adjusted prices, advertising tiers and household controls. Those developments may frustrate some customers, but the evidence here does not establish that a particular policy directly caused more piracy.
Nor does Netflix’s reported revenue growth support the claim that the company is financially collapsing. The “dead end” is better understood as a limit to the original consumer promise: endlessly adding services and raising prices can weaken the sense that streaming is simpler or better value than the alternatives.
Traffic estimates also do not translate one-for-one into lost revenue. Some people who pirate would never have subscribed or bought a title; some may later pay. Rights holders can lose monetizable viewing and incur enforcement, monitoring and legal costs, but estimates of piracy losses are often model-based rather than direct counts of foregone transactions.
What would make legal streaming a better deal?
Whether the legal market is working depends on more than the number of services or the headline price. A household can judge its options against the titles it actually watches:
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- Availability: Is the title legally offered in the viewer’s country, and is it included or separately priced?
- Total cost: What does the full set of services, add-ons and rentals cost over the months the household watches?
- Timing: Is a film, episode or event available when it matters?
- Convenience and quality: Can viewers search, play and download on their devices, with adequate resolution, bitrate, audio and subtitles?
- Permanence: Will access continue if a title leaves a catalog, or is a separate purchase option available?
- Trust: Is billing clear, and does the service avoid the malware, scams and deceptive payment risks associated with unauthorized sources?
For consumers, a practical response is to search legal availability before subscribing, compare a rental or purchase with another month of service, and rotate subscriptions around the shows they follow instead of keeping every platform year-round. Bundles can lower the effective price but may include services a household does not want.
For streaming companies, the challenge is to restore the qualities that first made subscriptions compelling: broad and predictable availability, simpler discovery, flexible pricing, reliable playback and a clear reason to keep paying. Enforcement can disrupt piracy, but it cannot by itself fix a legal product that feels fragmented or unavailable.
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