The French appetite for illegal downloads continues despite the French government’s attempts to curb the practice.
According to a new consumer research study by Futuresource Consulting, 8% of consumers across the UK, France, Germany and the USA admit to downloading video content illegally from file sharing websites.
While on the downloading segment, the study revealed that 15% of all downloaders admitted to acquiring video content illegally, with France coming out on top at 25%.
“The study shows that nearly 90% of Pay-TV subscribers in France who make additional payments to their provider are doing so for movie titles, and there are substantial differences between countries, ” said Alison Casey, Head of Global Content at Futuresource.
German Pay-TV subscribers came out on top for making additional payments for sport and TV shows, with France (sport) and the UK (TV shows) ranking last.
“In the UK, Pay-TV subscribers are having a feeding frenzy with free on-demand and catch-up delivered to their TV. 80% of respondents whose package offered this service used it, with the impact of the BBC iPlayer clearly shown in the research,” Casey explained.
Of the survey respondents that watched streamed or downloaded video content online around 90% have never paid for news content or recently-missed TV shows.
While just over half that have never paid to watch new movies. Of those who have never paid, more than half answered ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’ when asked whether they would be willing to pay in the future.
Advertising funded models do not look set to disrupt the yen for downloads with less than 1% claiming that would stop watching if ad reels were placed before, during or after an old movie or a TV show. 30% said it would have no impact and nearly half saying it only puts them off “a bit”.
“There is a huge appetite out there for free on-demand TV, but levels of paid-for activity are still low. In many cases, the propagation of new business models is key to the industry, with site location, navigation and unsuitable meta tagging still causing major problems for consumers; in many cases, the people we surveyed said they would watch more online content if the user interface and search facilities were improved,” the report said.