They're available on torrent sites, but how are you going to watch that video on your Roku, Apple TV, smart TV or whatever? The key here is hardware control. The big players have it.
Which is why my family, my girlfriend's family, and all our friends just use my Plex server
For a decade now, Plex runs on any Windows / Mac / Linux device. It'll run on a Raspberry Pi. NVIDIA Shield. Western Digital's My Cloud NAS products (from $139 w/ 2TB). QNAP. Synology.
The main obstacle for "average" people is just knowing that Plex exists.
Knowing that Plex exists is certainly one thing. But you still need to run it somewhere.
I think you underestimate people a bit too much.
"You use your remote to choose the show you want to watch, and you watch it" is worth $10-15 a month to people when it's compared to "You buy a server, plug it in and leave it on all the time, maybe be responsible for software updates on a regular basis, and also set up some kind of torrenting system to request the shows you want in advance".
Running Plex with whatever computer they've got isn't a stretch.
Plex ;)