Plenty of people also pirate to avoid paying, or to pay less.
I knew someone in England who ran a pirate football streaming service. He had TV and streaming subscriptions to a rented apartment in Cyprus, and streamed from there to people who paid him in England. Customers were introduced by word-of-mouth, so supposedly it was difficult for the copyright holders to discover.
The same matches were shown in England, but at a higher price.
I work in the tech side of a sports streaming company.
A quoted statistic from a study that was made a few years ago suggests that around 30% of people consuming pirate content are "pay never". We've done some exercises that show that a proportion of people can be encouraged not to watch pirate streams, but a good proportion won't no matter the cost.
Interestingly, we did an event where we made a significant match available for free, you still had to register for a 30 day trial, but you could easily cancel and pay nothing. The piracy on that match was no different than any other match and the estimated pirate viewership (we have various ways of estimating impact) was NO LOWER.
I have every sympathy with people who don't have access to content, and even for a portion of those who can't afford it. I certainly want everyone to get affordable content everywhere, I strive with my colleagues to make it better and deliver it in a cost effective way. But ultimately, we cannot ignore that too many people could afford to pay and don't want to. It's all well and good to point the finger at faceless corporations or the perception of the leagues, but ultimately its engineers like me who have to struggle with piracy, it's our work that's affected.
I knew someone in England who ran a pirate football streaming service. He had TV and streaming subscriptions to a rented apartment in Cyprus, and streamed from there to people who paid him in England. Customers were introduced by word-of-mouth, so supposedly it was difficult for the copyright holders to discover.
The same matches were shown in England, but at a higher price.