In the two years following Western copyright holders stepping back from the Russian market, the revenue from pirated services surged by about 70%, while the earnings of legitimate services stayed flat. This assessment references a study from InterMedia, as cited by RBC.
According to the report, the market for illegal audio, video, and book services in Russia grew by 71.4% in the last two years, rising from 7 billion rubles to as much as 12 billion rubles by 2021, and continuing into 2023, as noted by the publication.
Meanwhile, the revenue from legal video services showed little movement. In 2022 the turnover of online cinemas fell by 13%, and in 2023 it edged up by 3% to reach 89.7 billion rubles.
Revenue from legitimate voice services has not yet rebounded to pre-crisis heights: in 2022 it was down 25% from the strong year of 2020, with a small recovery observed in the current year.
Sales of printed, electronic, and audio books in the legal market have risen for the second consecutive year. Preliminary figures for 2023 suggest Russians will spend around 100 billion rubles on these formats, up from 99.8 billion rubles in 2022 and 63.4 billion rubles in 2021.
There were announcements in December highlighting the most popular games of 2023 among Russian pirate users.
In November, there were protests in Russia where crowds bloc ker hackers, citing illegal propaganda tied to video content.
Earlier surveys indicated that roughly one in three Russians used pirate services to watch movies, underscoring the broad reach of unauthorized content in the media landscape.