It boggles my mind that people pay for streaming when there are ample amounts of pirated sites that you can just stream from, you don't even have to download anything anymore.

Convenience is always going to be the answer.

If you know of safe pirating sites that have good bandwidth and uptime, that's great! But lots of consumers aren't willing to go through ones with quetsionable ads, or fight the need to new ones bimonthly as the streaming sites churn like a game of whackamole.

So if you've got that hookup and know where to find them, the convenience exists for you, its easy and useful. For someone wanting to get into it, it might not be so convenient.