A new Omdia report commissioned by Verimatrix reveals why reactive anti-piracy strategies are no longer enough as well as what streaming providers must do next to protect revenue, subscribers, and premium content investments.
3 statistics from a newly released Omdia report should stop every streaming executive in their tracks:
- More than 1 in 5 online adults (21%) admit to accessing pirated video content. That number jumps to 30% among sports fans and rises to an astonishing 43% among sports superfans. Among pay-TV sports superfans, the figure reaches 46%. In other words, nearly half of the industry’s most engaged and valuable viewers are also consuming pirated content.
- Piracy remains widespread despite an explosion in legitimate viewing options. Omdia tracked more than 1,670 online video services operating across 148 countries by the end of 2025, including more than 600 offering live sports. Yet piracy has not declined. In many markets, it has grown.
- Content costs continue to climb. Omdia forecasts media companies will spend a record $203 billion on programming in 2026, with live sports rights alone accounting for $73 billion. At the same time, revenue growth is increasingly concentrated in lower-yield advertising-supported formats, creating mounting pressure on profitability.
Taken together, these findings paint a concerning picture. Piracy is increasing while content investments are growing more expensive. Margins are under pressure. And yet, many organizations still rely heavily on anti-piracy approaches designed for a different era.
That reality sits at the heart of Omdia’s new report, Next-Generation Anti-Piracy for TV and Video: Why the Streaming Era Demands a Shift from Reaction to Prevention, commissioned by Verimatrix. The report argues that the industry’s long-standing reliance on reactive enforcement is no longer sufficient against today’s sophisticated piracy ecosystem.
Piracy has changed faster than security strategies
Historically, anti-piracy efforts focused on finding unauthorized content after it appeared and then removing it. Takedown notices, platform enforcement actions, and legal remedies became the standard response. Those approaches still have value. However, modern piracy operations have evolved far beyond simple content redistribution.
According to Omdia, piracy has progressed through several distinct phases, from broadcast signal theft and file sharing to stream ripping, illegal IPTV services, and today’s industrialized live restreaming operations. Each stage has become increasingly difficult to combat. What was once primarily a hardware problem has transformed into a software-defined cybersecurity challenge.
Streaming itself has contributed to this shift. The same technologies that make legitimate streaming convenient and accessible also provide new opportunities for pirates. Connected TV platforms, mobile applications, unmanaged consumer devices, cloud infrastructure, and content delivery networks have dramatically expanded the attack surface available to bad actors. Omdia estimates that app- and device-based piracy now represents a majority and growing share of unauthorized video consumption.
This means piracy is no longer confined to obscure websites. It increasingly resembles legitimate streaming services in terms of convenience, user experience, and accessibility.
The problem isn't just price
One of the more surprising findings in the report challenges a common assumption about piracy. Many providers believe consumers pirate content primarily because they do not want to pay. Omdia’s research suggests otherwise. Among viewers who consume pirated content, ease of access was cited more frequently than cost as the primary reason.
The trend becomes even more pronounced among highly engaged sports audiences. Nearly 4 in 10 sports superfans pointed to convenience as the key driver behind their piracy behavior.
That finding should concern operators because convenience is not something that can be solved through enforcement alone. Even successful takedowns do little to address the underlying mechanisms that make piracy simple and accessible.
New services appear quickly, stolen credentials are reused, and unauthorized applications emerge across multiple platforms. Live streams are even redistributed in real time. The result is an environment where reactive measures simply struggle to keep pace.
The economics favor prevention
The Omdia report highlights a fundamental challenge facing today’s content owners. By the time many forms of piracy are detected, much of the damage has already occurred. This is particularly true for live sports and premium events. A takedown issued after a match concludes does little to recover lost subscriptions, advertising revenue, or viewer engagement.
Omdia also points to emerging threats such as CDN leeching, where pirates obtain stolen access tokens and pull content directly from legitimate delivery infrastructure. This creates a triple financial impact: operators absorb the bandwidth costs, legitimate customers may experience degraded service, and expensive premium content is delivered to non-paying viewers.
That’s why the report advocates for a prevention-first mindset. Rather than focusing exclusively on detecting and removing piracy after it occurs, operators should increasingly invest in technologies that prevent attacks from succeeding in the first place.
What next-generation anti-piracy looks like
Importantly, Omdia does not suggest abandoning traditional anti-piracy tools. Instead, the report recommends combining foundational protections such as multi-DRM and forensic watermarking with newer proactive capabilities, including application security, client authentication, and application-level monitoring.
The objective is straightforward: reduce the number of successful attacks reaching distribution channels so that reactive enforcement efforts become more effective and manageable.
Application security, for example, helps identify tampered applications, emulator use, credential abuse, and unauthorized devices before content can be exploited. Client authentication verifies that content requests originate from legitimate applications rather than modified or malicious software. Together, these help close gaps. The report describes this as a mutually reinforcing architecture where proactive and reactive measures work together rather than operating independently.
Why this report matters now
Perhaps the most important takeaway from the report is that content protection is no longer merely a technical function. Omdia found that media organizations increasingly view content protection as a strategic business priority on par with major initiatives such as AI adoption, cloud migration, and streaming transformation. Content protection is also outpacing several other technology categories in planned investment growth.
That shift shows a broader industry realization: protecting revenue has become just as important as generating it. As piracy continues to industrialize and content investments continue to rise, operators can’t afford to depend solely on strategies that activate only after theft has occurred.
The streaming era demands a different approach. For anyone responsible for protecting premium content, maximizing subscriber revenue, or securing live sports investments, Omdia’s report offers a valuable and data-driven examination of where piracy is headed and why prevention must become a central part of the industry’s future anti-piracy strategy.
The numbers alone make it worth the read. Take a look at the full report here.
