No, it's not economic at all. You've repeatedly failed to grasp this in this entire comments section. It's about convenience. It is actually more convenient to pirate the handful of movies or TV shows people want to watch than to maintain a dozen subscriptions or activate just the one for the handful of shows or movies they want to watch at any given time.
Steam and Spotify have made it incredibly simple to just get what you want without having to juggle or manage any kind of bullshit.
Steam charges by the game and often times you can find whatever you want on iTunes or Amazon video if you're willing to "buy" the movie/tv season. Why do you limit yourself to content that comes to you from a subscription? I'm guessing because it's kind of expensive to buy a season of tv.
I don't, actually. I pay for a number of things that I feel deliver value. I've bought movies and TV off of amazon video/youtube. I pay for some podcasts. I buy audiobooks off of Audible and eBooks from kindle (despite these being even more expensive and more convenient to pirate than movies/TV). I've commissioned some graphic design stuff for personal use. Though I'm personally not into sports, a friend of mine is super into the NFL and buys their online package (though he still has to pirate certain local games because...not enough people showed up to the stadium that day???).
As I've said in the thread, for me the alternative to movies/TV isn't piracy, it's playing games or reading books, which I do pay for because the experiences of finding what I want, buying it, and consuming it is a superior experience to piracy. If that ever changes across the entire media landscape and games/books go the way of movies/TV that may change.
ah, sidenote! I watch NFL too. Generally local games are blacked out so you need to watch them on the local broadcast via antenna or a cable. I do find this annoying but I have an antenna pretty much for that reason.
The only thing I pirate is movies / tv shows ... and it's extremely simple: because it's not humanly possible to purchase them digitally.
Games: yes. Music: yes. Books: yes. Magazines: yes. What happened to tv and film? Where are you all?
Let's say I want to purchase The Fifth Element and throw it on my plex server so I can watch it on vacation out of the country? How can I do that? The answer is simple: you cannot. So I pirate it. And enjoy watching it. If the industry WOULD provide me with some way to purchase The Fifth Element, get a high quality mkv or mp4 or whatever download of it, I would do it in an instant.
Steam and Spotify have made it incredibly simple to just get what you want without having to juggle or manage any kind of bullshit.