We've written before about how piracy doesn't necessarily equal lost sales, and now there's a new anecdote to prove it.
World Wrestling Entertainment made an exhaustive effort to stop illegal online broadcasts of The Bash, its latest pay-per-view event. By cracking down on sites like Justin.tv and Ustream, WWE ensured that no Internet streams were available for the big show.
The result? No noticeable effect on sales, according to CrunchGear. In terms of purchases, the Bash was the third-least-popular "in years."
There are variables of course. WWE has seen a 16 percent decrease in revenue over the last year, but it also had the most profitable year in company history. In any case, it'd be hard for WWE to argue that its anti-piracy measures were a rousing success, and if they were, we'd have probably heard about it by now.
Why didn't sales increase when the illegal streaming sources were shut down? The obvious answer is that pirates probably weren't going to pay for the show anyway. That's what we usually hear when the piracy issue comes up.
But there's another factor in play, hinted at in CrunchGear's report: The pay-per-view version has real value. The video is in high-definition and lacks the quality issues you get with a pirated stream. Additionally, it's easy to obtain, billed to your account with just a few clicks on the remote control. That's a service worth paying for.
Compare that to, say, downloaded movies and TV shows. Piracy is a more attractive option for many viewers because it's easy to get the files -- you could argue that it'll stay that way for a long time -- and there aren't any usage restrictions.
Granted, downloads and live TV are two different issues, but they both demonstrate how offering a better legitimate product, not cracking down on the illegitimate one, is the best way to fight piracy. Still, Big Content will tell you otherwise.
