Pay-TV piracy turnover at €90-160 mln

The annual turnover of pirated pay-TV programming in Greece is estimated to be up to 160 million euros.

This illegal service provides unauthorized access to audiovisual content either for a monthly subscription or through illegal sports broadcasting websites, which are usually free to access. 

The profitable nature of this activity can be seen after the recent dismantling by the police of a ring that operated for eight years, had 13,000 customers and had illegally made more than €25 million. A smaller circuit, which was dismantled last June, had revenues of €1.2 million.

In Greece, some sources of the telecommunications market put the number of illegal subscribers at half a million, who pay, that is, a monthly subscription of €15 on average, while other sources put this number at 800,000-900,000.

As a result, the revenue for this category of criminals ranges from €90 million to around €160 million, with the number of legitimate subscribers with active subscriptions to Cosmote, Nova and Vodafone TV at 1.2 million, according to the data of the National Telecommunications and Posts Commission.