TeaTV is just the tip of the iceberg, with piracy estimated to cost the United States the economy around $30 billion annually. This is far from insignificant, as it amounts to approximately 10% of the overall global market.

Aside from the HBO and Netflix content, TeaTV also offers early release versions of movies, with a bootleg version of Joker available currently. Naturally, the promise of free premium content has attracted many people to the TeaTV service, even though it is necessary to sit through advertisements in order to view the chosen content.

Some of the brands that have been represented on the TeaTV platform include the TikTok, streaming service, the music streaming service Pandora, the Madden Mobile video game, Pluto TV, Hulu, and Yahoo Mail. It should be emphasized that these companies do not necessarily endorse what TeaTV is doing, rather they are in a pool of advertisements that can be played across multiple mediums.

The TeaTV website has even displayed advertisements for Walgreens, Amazon’s Fire TV and Kia, but this has since ceased after CNBC, who broke the story originally, began contacting advertisers and explained what was taking place. Nonetheless, CNBC noted that the majority of brand advertisers were reluctant to comment, while Walgreens admitted that they were unaware of the issue.

Viewers on TeaTV are provided with several downloading options, meaning that content can be preserved on Android, Windows, or MacOS devices. Streaming quality is surprisingly good, with 1080p options widely available. While companies are becoming increasingly aware that this website is an issue, there is currently no let up of ads on the service.

As would probably be expected, TeaTV is something of a shadowy service, with no information on its website regarding the location of the company behind TeaTV, or indeed if it has even been registered as a company whatsoever. The only contact information provided is a Gmail address, although TeaTV does have an active Twitter account, where releases and problems are discussed.

While TeaTV is a prominent example of the pirate streaming phenomenon, there are many other examples out there. Apps and websites that provide pirated content continue to increase in number, and this has made the issue extremely difficult to address.

Obviously, content providers such as HBO and Netflix would wish for such piracy sites to be shut down as quickly as possible. But it has been difficult to achieve this, while the culprit for the problem has yet to be satisfactorily established. Some blame companies in the advertising industry, while others believe that the brands should be more scrupulous.

While the debate rages on, sites such as a TeaTV will continue to prosper.