Well, at least this is an option.
Average daily audience of Rutube in Russia among users over 12 years old reached 4.4 million people in June, showing a two-fold increase year-on-year, Vedomosti reports, citing Mediascope data. For comparison: YouTube’s audience in Russia grew by 9.4% over the same period, reaching 55.6 million people, while VKontakte’s grew by 5%, to 54.7 million.
Experts see several reasons for the rapid growth of Rutube’s audience. Maksim Ryabyko, a member of the board of the Association for the Protection of Copyright on the Internet, and Karen Kazaryan, director of the Institute for Internet Research, attribute it to the appearance of pirated content on the platform, including Netflix series (The Witcher, The Queen’s Gambit), films such as Oppenheimer, Barbie, the second part of Dune, and other films that were not officially released in Russia.
Alina Emkuzheva from the Patentus patent bureau suggests that Rutube does not block pirated content because copyright holders probably do not send the relevant requests.
However, according to Anna Planina, Director of Digital Technologies at NMi Group, it is too early to say that Rutube is a real competitor to YouTube. Despite reports of the American video hosting service slowing down, its traffic in Russia remains consistently high.
