This is laughable. I’m an avid torrentor, but I don’t delude myself into thinking what I’m doing is good for the copyright holder.
What's more, brands like UFC have other ways of generating revenue than just licensing fees. A person may not be able to afford a subscription, but they might still be eager to buy an official UFC T-shirt.
"We find movies with prerelease piracy are associated with lower revenues despite the [Word of Mouth] effect. Critically, however, we show a positive correlation between postrelease piracy and WOM volume, and we extend the field by finding that the presence of postrelease piracy is associated with an approximately 3.0% increase in box office revenue. We also note the impact of a raid by the Swedish Police that temporarily took down The Pirate Bay website in December 2014. The period when the site was down experienced a decline in WOM volume and revenues, consistent with the effect of lower postrelease piracy predicted by our models."
Does Piracy Create Online Word of Mouth? An Empirical Analysis in the Movie Industry
Shijie Lu, Xin (Shane) Wang, Neil Bendle
DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2019.3298
I don't know which way the balance swings in terms of people who can afford to pay and choose not to vs. people who can't afford to pay, but I think with something like the UFC that relies to some degree on fan culture for its appeal there's a clear benefit from having more people watch it even if those additional viewers don't pay.