Television companies across Europe are losing an estimated €3.21bn (£2.8bn) due to illegal streaming sites, according to a new study.
The study, carried out by researchers at Bournemouth University, also found that providers of these illegal streaming services made an estimated total of €1.06bn (£920m) last year.
The study was commissioned by the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA) and looked at all 27 countries in the EU, along with the UK.
Illegal streaming was particularly prevalent in the UK, with a fifth of these revenues, or €194.6m (£169.8m), estimated to come from services used in the country.
The study looked at the total number of people watching internet protocol television (IPTV) according to Eurostat’s dataset on internet activities.
It then estimated the number of people watching streaming TV legitimately using data supplied by AAPA members on the amount of users paying for IPTV subscriptions, along with data on the number of legal paid TV providers from the European Audiovisual Observatory.
These figures were then used to work out the estimated costs to legitimate IPTV providers across the Continent.
The overall numbers of people watching pirated material were likely to be higher when people watching such content through social media sites and apps was taken into account.
Nearly 5% of people in Europe accessed illegal streaming sites in 2021
The study found that more than 17 million people across the 27 countries under consideration used illicit IPTV.
This represented around 4.5% of the combined population of the countries.
The Netherlands had the highest proportion of people who watched illegally streamed TV, followed by Ireland and the UK.
Nearly a third of those accessing illegal streaming sites across all the countries were aged between 16 and 24.
The study authors noted that attitudes and perception can drive digital piracy, citing a 2020 European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) report which found that a quarter of Europeans felt that it was acceptable to watch pirated content online.
Younger people were more likely to have this attitude towards illegal streaming services.
Sheila Cassells, executive vice-president of the AAPA, said in the report that the relatively new area of illicit IPTV was driven by a number of factors.
These included low entry barriers on the part of providers of these services, along with high rewards and a limited risk of enforcement.
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