After a sharp increase of audiovisual piracy during lockdown, Italy has now seen a significant drop in such acts that are in line with pre-Covid data.

According to a study by Ipsos for the Federation for the Protection of Audiovisual and Media Content (FAPAV), around 243 million acts of piracy were recorded during the first lockdown in 2020.

However, over the last 12 months, the number of acts showed a steep decline (57 million in an average two-month period) and are also lower than in an average two-month period in 2019 (69 million).

The habits of pirates seems to have changed, with less watching films and TV series illegally (25 per cent and 20 per cent, down 6 per cent and 3 per cent, respectively) in the face of a growing interest for live sporting events (now at 14 per cent compared to 10 per cent in 2019).

Although physical piracy continues to decrease, digital piracy grew by 4 per cent compared to 2019, with a decline in downloading and streaming but not in the use of illegal IPTV.

In 2019, 10 per cent of the Italian population were illegal IPTV users, but in the last 12 months this figure has increased to 21 per cent, or almost 11 million people. Of these, about 2 million also claimed to have an illegal subscription.

One interesting fact is that 30 per cent of respondents said they had taken out a new subscription to legal viewing platforms in the last twelve months.