The Rise of Netflix Competitors Has Pushed Consumers Back Toward Piracy
Found on Motherboard on Wednesday, 03 October 2018
The culprit: an increase in exclusivity deals that force subscribers to hunt and peck among a myriad of streaming services to actually find the content they’re looking for.+
“More sources than ever are producing "exclusive" content available on a single streaming or broadcast service—think Game of Thrones for HBO, House of Cards for Netflix, The Handmaid's Tale for Hulu, or Jack Ryan for Amazon,” Sandvine’s Cam Cullen said in a blog post.
Studies have shown that nearly every major broadcaster will have launched their own streaming service by 2022. And these companies are increasingly choosing to keep their own content as in-house exclusives in order to drive subscriptions.
It's pretty simple: making it more complex to get the shows people want to see will drive them to the simple solutions where they get everything via one source; and as always, piracy not only makes it so easy, but also delivers the product in formats which are accessible everywhere, without DRM or country restrictions. Consumers just pick the more convenient product.