In recent years, roughly 130 pirate streaming services have appeared across the United States, offering movies, TV shows, and sports for monthly subscriptions ranging from five to ten dollars. Bloomberg reported this trend, highlighting how these platforms present themselves as legitimate options while distributing stolen content. Revenue flows from advertising and subscriptions, and the annual turnover is estimated near two billion dollars.
The Motion Picture Association of America notes that the three largest pirate platforms together likely serve close to two million users. These sites may look like ordinary streaming services, yet their core activity centers on distributing content without permission. The financial engine behind them remains robust, drawing from ads and memberships, which sustains substantial yearly income.
The Global Innovation Policy Center of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates piracy linked to illegal streaming and file sharing drains the U.S. economy by about thirty billion dollars each year in lost revenue and costs roughly 250,000 jobs. On a global scale, the damage is around seventy-one billion dollars annually, according to the coverage.
GearsTV, identified as one of the most prominent pirate services, ended up with a five and a half year prison sentence for its founder, and authorities confiscated assets totaling about thirty million dollars. At its height, the service boasted around one hundred thousand subscribers and generated monthly revenue near one and a half million dollars.
MPA figures show visits to pirated sites climbed to a record two hundred fifteen billion in 2023. The ACE Alliance, formed by the MPA to fight piracy, has helped shut down more than one thousand four hundred illegal streaming operations in the United States.
Consulting firm Parks Associates projects that losses to legal streaming services in the United States due to piracy since 2022 will total about one hundred thirteen billion dollars over the next two years.
Analysts from Parks Associates, including Steve Hawley, cautioned that while some countermeasures and best practices bring optimism for stabilization by 2027, there is no broad agreement on when a decline in piracy might begin, and opinions vary among stakeholders.
Near the end of October 2023, discussions centered on the risk posed by widespread approval of internet hacking, particularly by Russian actors, and what that could mean for digital security and content protection.
Earlier reporting noted that many Russian players tend to engage in pirate video game activities, underscoring a broader pattern of unauthorized distribution across digital entertainment markets. These trends highlight ongoing concerns about safeguards, enforcement, and the economic impact of piracy on content creators and legitimate platforms in North America.