Many sites have laid claim to the title of most popular pirate site but traffic data being reported by SimilarWeb for streaming site HiAnime.to is on a whole new level. After pulling in 302 million visits in September, the pirate streaming site added almost 62 million more in October. That earns the platform a GlobalRank of 120, and a U.S. streaming sector rank higher than Disney Plus.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
In January 2017, Alexa data indicated that The Pirate Bay was the most popular torrent site on the internet. In July that same year, the notorious torrent site entered the Alexa Top 100 with the 99th most popular domain on the internet.
TPB had been there before but following a disastrous period of downtime in 2014, many users simply went elsewhere. That had a significant effect on the site’s traffic and its coveted Top 100 ranking.
The extraordinary background to traffic data now being reported by SimilarWeb was likely affected by downtime too. However, seven years on from The Pirate Bay’s misfortune, the piracy landscape is more complex, enforcement has increased, yet the ecosystem somehow appears to recover more easily than before.
Very Big Numbers
As SimilarWeb’s data shows, HiAnime.to received 331.6 million visits in November 2024. For any site today that’s a very big number yet the data shows the site received fewer visits than the previous month. In October 2024, HiAnime received 364 million visits, 32 million more than November and a remarkable 62 million increase on September’s traffic.
Unprecedented….
With more than three times the traffic of legal competitor Crunchyroll, HiAnime is obviously a priority target for Japan’s anime producers; but if only it stopped there.
According to the data, HiAnime outranks GitHub in the United States overall, and both Peacock TV and Disney Plus in the United States’ ‘Streaming and Online TV’ category. Outranking Disney Plus globally can’t be ruled out.
As a caveat, we should mention that this data only includes website visits, not traffic that goes to the associated streaming apps.
[Illegal] Global player
Roughly 40% of the site’s visits are from users in the United States, four in ten aged between 18 and 24. Over 80% of the site’s social media traffic is reportedly fueled by YouTube, although the majority of overall visits (76%) are direct. How the site managed to pull in so much traffic is extraordinary in itself.
The Secret Sauce
The most significant enforcement action of 2024 saw anti-piracy coalition ACE take down FMovies and several closely linked additional sites, together accounting for over a billion visits each year. One of the sites taken offline was Aniwave.to, a relatively new site but one already enjoying a significant amount of traffic.
The secret sauce that enabled Aniwave to become so popular so quickly, isn’t exactly a secret. Aniwave wasn’t a new site, it was simply a rebranding of another anime giant called 9anime, which previously ‘shut down’ due to alleged legal issues.
So when 9anime/Aniwave was shut down by ACE/MPA so dramatically in Vietnam late August/early September, HiAnime was waiting in the wings to scoop up the traffic. Whether one cuts it this way or that, that traffic was effectively generated by itself.
Chameleons Eat Themselves, Grow Stronger
Compounding the incestuous relationship between these chameleon platforms are events dating back to summer 2023. Under pressure from ACE, the owner of a site called Zoro.to handed over the site’s domains to ACE/MPA. Shortly after, Zoro.to was suddenly “sold to new owners”, who immediately rebranded the world’s then-largest pirate site to Aniwatch.
When Aniwatch came under pressure from ACE in September 2023, the subsequent response was similarly reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto. On a five-star wanted level, the site pulled into a paint shop, received a complete respray, before reappearing as HiAnime; stars wiped clean and traffic intact.
A month after the big shutdown in Vietnam, with HiAnime pulling in extraordinary traffic, ACE was observed in hot pursuit once again.
How this will eventually play out seems almost inevitable; the big question is whether outranking Disney Plus globally comes before or after.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
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