Geofencing (you can't watch this sport from this location because fuck you), devices blacklisting (you can't watch this sport on your mobile device because fuck you), rights expiring (you can't watch this match anymore despite you have "bought" it because fuck you), screen limiting (you are logged in on both your TV and iphone so fuck you), etc. All for $19.99.
In contrast, you pay like $9.99 and you can watch anything, anywhere, anytime.
Remember when music piracy died? When Steve Jobs removed friction between me and my music.
No DRM issues (like same quality on every device, no extra privileges), one application for everything, runs everywhere, no UX issues (e.g., long scrolling to continue watching series, no autoplay and no spoilers in the thumbnail). It's worth paying for such an experience, which the first parties don't provide.
(Speaking in general here, this includes Jellyfin.)
DRM issues are why I cancelled and won't renew Paramount+. Their damn Google TV app running on a completely stock/factory Chromecast w/ Google TV, plugged in via HDMI to an unmodified TV, frequently (always on the same shows, especially newer Star Trek series) refuses to recognize the validity of my setup and reverts to an incredibly annoying color tint rotation that cycles between extremes. It took me quite a while to figure out what the hell was happening.
I'm personally not into piracy, but with paid pirate sports streaming websites, you often get a better user experience and way more choice for cheaper than with the legal options. You only need to pay once and you don't need to jump between apps.
I don't condone it but if you're in the UK and you want to legally watch every premier league game last season...
Sky Sports - £35/month
TNT Sports - £32/month
Amazon Prime - £9/month
And then in the UK there is a legal peculiarity whereby 3pm Saturday games are illegal to broadcast on television, so you don't even get that slot. It's the most common slot with about a third of the weekends games.
v.s. Paying someone on discord £8/month for all the games
You can often get a deal if you threaten to cancel, go through with it, and then wait for a retentions offer, but since Sky was acquired by Comcast that's happening less and less, especially for the superior Sky Q satellite service - you can get great deals on their Sky Stream service, but it's plagued with issues, and you no longer have the ability to time shift by having the main box record directly off the satellite feed.
You also can't skip ads unless you pay them, versus the ability to pause, fast forward etc. on the Satellite service.
IPTV in Western Europe is becoming more popular because it's decently priced for what you get. Say you want to watch football, but don't give a shit about anything else sports related. Well, you're probably still paying for everything else in a giant package for 50-100+ USD a month.
Especially for someone who only cares about their team, watching two games a month, that's a really bad deal. Even more so if your local offer is burdened with bad commentators or ads you can't get away from. Scale that problem up to someone who watches a few different sports, but none are available as one single package, and the value for money gets worse, while the experience grows worse as well, being you're now divided between several services. Add in DRM and bad app experiences, and you get people who just can't be arsed to do things properly any more, given they are functionally being punished for doing so.
Or you could pay a shady guy a few quid a month, but the service is good, and you get everything under the sun, moon, sky, and maybe even the stars. Can't blame them for wanting an experience that isn't trying to wring them dry.
It's so funny how much that reminds me of working in a university acquired by a large for-profit corporation.
After the MBAs arrived, the whole thing was about selling shitty packages for students.
- The college was somehow legally allowed to charge a minimum, so people only needing one single class was still paying for 3.
- They would push high distance learning for anything they legally could, showing the same video of the same teacher to all their 10 universities and paying "tutors" a minimum wage to moderate hundreds of Moodle classes (if not putting Masters students to do it for half the minimum wage). So 80 students paying $1000 on average to take a 5 class, and some of those cost on average $2000 + server costs. What a business.
- Of course classes that had 10 people in it suddenly had 40. And for when there wasn't 40 people to attend, they would consolidate classes with another group and half would have to go to the other side of town for the one class that, if they didn't attend, would set back their tuition by one year.
But yeah, sure it makes more money.
When you don't even have to compete on quality, that's what happens.
I don't have cable or IPTV, but I do pirate other stuff that I paid for:
Anything that has intrusive DRM has no place in my computer.
If it's for work, I will still pirate while holding the license, just for the stability alone.
For music stuff stability is paramount and I'd rather not deal with things that magically stop working from time to time (IK Multimedia is notorious for that).
I rented a movie recently on Amazon and it refused to play in high definition because they didn't like the device I was streaming it to. Bullshit like that.
One thing that I haven't seen mentioned is that you dont have to deal with re-authentication just because you decided to watch it at a different location.
There are many small papercuts that legal providers subject customers to.
