It very well might be good for the copyright holder. There is obviously a benefit to buzz around your content, and piracy helps generate that buzz all the same

It very well might be good for the copyright holder. There is obviously a benefit to buzz around your content, and piracy helps generate that buzz all the same. It's not cut and dry. 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