Abstract
Pre-release leaks of cultural content incentivise consumers to look for unauthorised sources. I find that such events not only affect the leaked titles but also carry spillover effects for other titles with a shared audience, suggesting the existence of strong switching costs associated with the illegal sources. I use a unique dataset on a sample of TV shows aired around the time of a pre-release leak of a large audience TV show (Game of Thrones). The results of a difference-in-differences analysis indicate that the leaked show lost viewership for both the leaked episodes and those that followed. More importantly, the event seems to have affected other TV shows that may share an audience with the leaked show. Finally, my results for the shows with a shared audience are corroborated by evidence of an increase in web searches for online sources of their episodes. These findings suggest that one-time events incentivising piracy can carry effects beyond the period and initial focus.
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Source IMDb and Nielsen (as reported on Wikipedia) data. The IMDb ratings come from IMDb public use files, downloaded on 23 June 2017
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
The Google Trends application allows users to track the Google search popularity of specified phrases. For more on the popularity index, see Sect. 4.
See Google Trends data for the phrase “HBO”.
It was outperformed only by shows of different formats: two documentaries (Planet Earth I & II) and a TV mini-series (Band of Brothers) from 2001.
Although the show ended in 2019, it is still listed as the 12th most popular TV show on IMDb as of 30 September 2020.
First episode of season 3 was aired on 31 March.
Statista: https://www.statista.com/statistics/267161/market-share-of-search-engines-in-the-united-states/; comScore: http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Rankings/comScore-Releases-February-2016-US-Desktop-Search-Engine-Rankings; NetMarketShare: https://www.netmarketshare.com/search-engine-market-share.aspx?qprid=4&qpcustomd=1. All accessed on 2017–09-13.
In an interesting case from 2017, a hacker or a group of hackers identifying themselves as The Dark Overlord threatened Netflix that they would leak 10 out of 13 episodes of the new season of Orange is the New Black around two months ahead of the official schedule. Netflix refused to respond to the blackmail attempt, and the leaked episodes attracted many viewers. It is unclear whether this leak affected the Netflix viewership of the series, but Netflix’s refusal to acquiesce to the hackers’ demands shows that the leak might not have been harmful for this type of network.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the reviewers of the prior version of this article for their helpful comments, as well as thank Iga Magda of IBS, the participants of the ACEI 2018, DELAB 2017, WIEM 2017, and EALE 2018 conferences, Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Warsaw doctoral seminar and IBS internal seminar for their valuable comments. I would also like to thank the IMDb team for pointing me to the IMDb public use files. The usual disclaimers apply. All errors are mine.
Funding
This work was supported by the National Science Centre (Grant UMO-2016/21/N/HS4/01803).
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Appendices
Appendix 1
See Table 10.
Appendix 2
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Hardy, W. Brace yourselves, pirates are coming! the effects of Game of Thrones leak on TV viewership. J Cult Econ 46, 27–55 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-020-09404-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10824-020-09404-1