Ownership is the premium version of a product. Turns out piracy is sometimes the only ownership option. Everything else is just a subscription, license, service.

It raises questions about how we define access versus ownership in the digital age.

This is true for watching NFL.

Option 1: subscribe to 7 streaming services which each have some unpredictable subset of games

Option 2: go to some website that has all the games

The MLS did this with their Apple deal (pay a maximum of $120 for a season and you're guaranteed to get every league match of the season through the "TV" app), and it's been reasonably successful. That said, the league used that money in part to bring in Lionel Messi, and his significant international following came along with him, so it's hard to parse out how much of that is because they made the games easy to access (with the significant asterisk that Linux and Android users are stuck with a web app) versus his singular impact.

The other part of this is that MLS is significantly smaller (~$275m in non-team-sponsorship revenue in 2023) than other North American leagues (the NHL, the next-largest league, had ~$6.75b in non-team-sponsorship revenue in 2023), so I don't know how reasonable it is for other leagues to follow the MLS's path.

But the reality is that it often is.

I have a friend who first pirates a game and then decides whether to support the game creators or not

Yeah, I think this is a good approach, just keep in mind that bought games may not be playable after some time due to silly reasons.