They didn't though. Every single streaming service bar Netflix loses money. On top of that, they've all poisoned the well by creating as many subscription tiers as Dell has laptop SKUs and raising the price every 9 months so nobody knows what the service should cost.
This ensures that people start and stop subscriptions just to watch a single series, instead of sticking with a single service all year.
So it appears paying entrenched IP-hoarding organizations majority of your income further incentivizing their entrenchment is not the best business practice for a middlemen
The hoarding began once they decided to abandon the DVD market, paranoid about file ripping and sharing. Now TV shows are like videogames now, can't watch without an internet connection phoning home.
Which choice could they have made differently here? They took the "pay for it" option that you suggested and then you still blamed them for giving the company negative incentives.
