Disney+ has taken two of the top three spots when it comes to the most pirated TV series of 2023.
HBO landed the top position for a second year running after the Pedro Pascal-led The Last of Us dethroned its streaming stablemate House of the Dragon.
Rounding out the top three is another Pascal offering, The Mandalorian, followed by Marvel’s Loki series, according to data from BitTorrent.
HBO
The prize does not bode well for Disney who also came in first in 2020 and 2021 with Wandavision and The Mandalorian respectively, as the Mouse House’s streaming services struggle to make ends meet. Disney’s streaming services also include Hulu and ESPN.
In fact, in 2023 Disney+ had four of the 10 most pirated shows, followed closely by Apple+ with three.
Streaming giant Netflix did not feature in the top 10 at all, with BitTorrenthypothesizing that was to do with the fact it has more subscribers than any of the other streaming options.
Piracy is a huge issue for the streaming services, many of whom are already in financial trouble, and is expected to cost them billions of dollars in lost revenue.
A study from earlier this year found pirating websites and password sharing could cost providers around $113 billion in the next five years alone.
Conducted by Parks Associates, the research found that even though streamers were taking measures to crack down on piracy, it is not known when the effects of that might be tangible.
“While there is some optimism that emerging countermeasures and best-practices may see piracy begin to plateau by 2027, there is no consensus among stakeholders as to when it may begin to decline,” Parks Associates consultant Steve Hawley said in April.
Not only is content piracy a headache for the major streamers, it is a problem that actually seems to be on the rise.
The researchers predicted piracy rates for US TV and film to rise from 22 percent in 2022 to 24.5 percent by 2027.
“The number of households who share account credentials and consume pirated content is rising. People are increasingly looking for new ways to satisfy entertainment needs,” said Sarah Lee, a research analyst for Parks Associates.
Disney+ added nearly 7 million core subscribers in its fourth quarter after losing millions in the previous quarter, bringing its total number of customers to 112 million.
Bob Iger, Disney’s CEO, promised in November that the company was focused on “achieving significant and sustained profitability in our streaming business,” and predicted that would happen in the last financial quarter of 2024. However, “progress may not look linear from quarter to quarter,” Disney warned in its end-of-year financial report.
He also vowed to be “bullish” about making Disney+ profitable after undergoing a major cost-cutting program in the company to the tune of $7 billion in order to stem the loss from its streamers.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.