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A new report from consultancy firm Ernst & Young (EY) estimates that only 10 percent of Indian video streaming service users are paying for access to their content. The report says that there are a total of 503 million Indian users using accessible OTT platforms.

EY states that while the country has seen strong video streaming or OTT growth in the last few years, the proportion of paid user growth has remained in the single digits. It attributes password sharing and content piracy for this difference.

“The number of OTT consumers is probably much higher than the number of subscriptions; like how a newspaper is consumed by several people in a family or around a tea stall in smaller towns,” said Ashish Pherwani of EY, in the report.

In its recent Q1 results, American OTT platform Netflix also announced a similar problem with their numbers. While the headline remained that the company had lost 200,000 subscribers in the first three months of 2022, Netflix also announced that they believed password sharing was a major problem.

According to co-CEO Reed Hastings, the platform has a third of their users not paying for their service. “There are over 100 million households that already are choosing to view Netflix. They love the service. We just got to get paid to some degree for them,” he said.

While the company is predicting it will lose a net 2 million more subscribers in the next quarter, they are focussing on converting these 100 million users to join the ranks of the 220 million users that already pay for Netflix.

The company is reportedly considering cracking down on password sharing, as well as potentially introducing ads into their service to monetise these non-paying users.