Repression is in full swing in the area of piracy. Exasperated by the loss of income, rights holders are increasing their requests which contribute to the delisting, or even the outright blocking of illegal platforms. This method, however, is very far from curbing the efforts of fraudsters, and this is reflected in the insolent audience figures of certain illicit platforms. Explanations.
A larger audience than Disney+ globally?
TorrentFreak indeed relays data from SimilarWeb concerning the HiAnime.to site. The latter totaled 331.6 million visits in November 2024, which is already gigantic. The previous month, it already recovered 364 million.
These figures don’t tell us anything as such, but a comparison with some popular legal portals is dizzying. In fact, it already has triple the audience of its main legal competitor Crunchyroll, but that is just a detail.
Thus, it also performs better than the sites of the Peacock TV and Disney Plus platforms in the United States. It is impossible to be certain, but the pirate site could even outstrip the audience of the big-eared firm on a global level.
There remains one nuance to take into account. This data is based on websites only and therefore does not take into account traffic to these companies’ streaming applications.
Our colleagues also note that 40% of HiAnime.to’s audience comes from the United States, and that more than 80% of traffic from social networks is fueled by YouTube. That said, 76% of visitors come directly to the site, which they therefore know very well.
We don’t have to look far for the reasons for this success. Indeed, this portal is not really “new”. It is an heir to the 9anime platform which changed its name after its closure.
Japan’s response is being prepared
The issue of piracy remains a sensitive subject, particularly in Japan. We recently spoke to you about this project from the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs, which wants to devote 300 million yen, or around 2 million dollars, to create a piracy detection system powered by AI.
In detail, it would thus be able to automatically find websites which distribute pirated content. The idea is also to streamline the entire process for rights holders who wish to have these broadcasts removed. For more information, do not hesitate to reread our previous article here.
