One of the most impressive stories of 2021 is just how fast Disney+ continues to grow, only two years after the service launched in 2019. The fairly young streaming platform is now one of the biggest in the world and continues to grow at a pretty absurd pace. But even though it seems as if everyone is signing up for Disney+, there are still a ton of people who are even more willing to just pirate that content for free, especially if Marvel Studios superheroes star in it.
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According to a year-end list from pirating resource TorrentFreak, the top 10 most-pirated TV series of 2021 are littered with Marvel Studios content. More than half of the list are new TV shows produced by Marvel, including “WandaVision” topping the list. That award-winning series is closely followed by “Loki,” “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier,” “Hawkeye,” and “What If?” All told, the only series in the top 6 that isn’t produced by Marvel Studios is “The Witcher” at #3.
Perhaps what’s even more interesting is noticing what isn’t on the list. The biggest TV series on the planet in 2021 is “Squid Game,” and the Netflix hit doesn’t even register in the top 10 pirated shows. In fact, Netflix only has “The Witcher” and “Arcane” on the list, both of which are clearly being targeted because of their video game lineage (not to paint with a generalizing brush, but the Venn diagram of people who pirate things and people who play video games are almost the same circles).
Obviously, this is a Top 10 list no one would like to be on top of, but that said, Disney+ has to feel pretty good about the interest from each Marvel Studios release in 2021. And right now, it doesn’t appear as if these pirates are killing Disney’s bottom line just yet. But in the future, this definitely could be a problem.
