How do you do the math when one of the unaccounted variables is the potential conversion rate of people who would pay for a HBO streaming service but won't pay for it if it's chained to a pay TV subscription, and so they pirate instead?
Piracy thwarts everything HBO has to track and measure ratings, so how could they possibly "do the math" and figure out the size, demographics, and potential conversion rate of this group?
I think it's more chaining HBO to a cable subscription is a known quantity, and venturing out into a pure streaming service is the great unknown.
so how could they possibly "do the math" and figure out the size, demographics, and potential conversion rate of this group?
Honestly its not that hard. HBO just has to look at how offering HBO GO as a standalone service would cost them from whatever punishment would be handed down from the large cable operators. This is likely a very known quantity (We'll call it X). Then they just need to do a little market research to know how many people are 1. not buying cable. 2. Would by HBO Go as a standalone service (We'll call this Y) if Y is greater then X then it would make sense. The Piracy conversion angle is pretty meaningless since its a subset of the actual target market.
I have no idea the actual numbers but having worked in the industry for sometime I'm guessing that Y is pretty much a rounding error compared to X.
If we're to assume their paranoia about piracy is because they've done the math, then clearly HBO considers it significant.
I don't think they've done the math, because I think "market research" into the underground world of private torrent trackers is, uhh, a lot harder than you seem to think it is, trust me. If HBO were running ads on a site like TorrentFreak to take a survey, then perhaps I'd think they're actually doing their due diligence in this area, but they're not.
I'll offer an alternative hypothesis (blowhard: I worked in digital video distribution for a paytv software company for 4 years)
HBO is clinging to their legacy business model. The direct Internet streaming market is untrusted and scary. They're afraid to even attempt to cross the bridge.
They have consultants brought in who do this for a living. I don't know the specifics but, at a high level, they will introduce a range of possible values of people who would switch and the correlated range of losses that would inflict. They get a recommendation based on a number of other variables which tightens the range and have to make a judgment call. This is what they decided.
Piracy thwarts everything HBO has to track and measure ratings, so how could they possibly "do the math" and figure out the size, demographics, and potential conversion rate of this group?
I think it's more chaining HBO to a cable subscription is a known quantity, and venturing out into a pure streaming service is the great unknown.