Piracy in live sports: How broadcasters, leagues, platforms and federations are fighting back

The illegal streaming of sports is not new, but its scale, sophistication and consumer acceptance are forcing broadcasters, rights holders, leagues and platforms to rethink how they protect live events and sustain their business models.

“Intellectual property theft, if left unchecked, is a threat to the growth and viability of the sports ecosystem,”says Ed McCarthy, COO at DAZN Group. “Illegal streaming also undermines the value of sports rights and the integrity of broadcasters’ business models, while compromising the experience for paying fans.”

That sentiment is echoed widely across the sector. Adam Kelly, president of IMG, described piracy as “an existential issue for the entire sports industry. Rights fees are based on a return on investment, and so naturally, if there’s too much leakage, that is impacted. Over time, that will ultimately impact the money federations, leagues, events and clubs can invest back into everything that fans love about sports.”

Kelly says piracy is “an increasing challenge across all premium sports properties”, but it tends to be most present in markets where “disposable income is lower and access to legitimate subscriptions is limited, as well as among younger audiences”. Football, because of its global appeal, has always suffered, says Kelly, but as Alain Durand, senior director business development, Synamedia, points out, all sports are affected, including F1, golf and mixed martial arts.

LaLiga reports that Spanish football clubs alone lose an estimated €600 million to €700 million annually as a result of illegal broadcasts, though there has been a substantial fightback from the league. It recorded a 60% drop in piracy during the recently concluded 2024/25 season, “an unprecedented improvement in an industry where illegal access to live sports content had historically remained persistently high”.

Grup Mediapro doesn’t have a specific metric that quantifies the direct impact of piracy on production budgets, but “it’s evident that any revenue lost due to piracy inevitably affects how much can be invested in content creation”, it says. The company notes that piracy devalues broadcasting rights, harming clubs, athletes and any secondary teams reliant on first-team revenue. It also creates audience tolerance for low-quality viewing, hindering investment in premium production.

‘Intellectual property theft, if left unchecked, is a threat to the growth and viability of the sports ecosystem’

Everyone we spoke to on this subject also pointed out that watching illegally is unsafe for fans. “IP theft is increasingly perpetrated by organised crime on a global scale and exposes fans who choose to watch content illegally to potential cybersecurity risks, including identity theft, fraud and privacy issues, as well as malicious content and legal consequences,” says McCarthy.

This season, LaLiga launched a new awareness campaign under the slogan ‘You get pirated football. They get you’. The campaign aims to educate fans about the risks of using unofficial streams, not just the harm it can cause to the sport, but also the personal risks users face.

LaLiga’s anti-piracy campaign

International issue

“At Ampere, we run an annual survey of online sports fans in various markets globally, and in the last couple of waves, have sought to capture live sport piracy behaviours and motivations,” says Daniel Monaghan, research manager at Ampere Analysis.

Ampere’s research reports that nearly half of UK sports fans (48%) admit to pirating live events monthly, with rates even higher in the US (69%) and Brazil (72%). In markets such as China and India, over 84% of sports fans pirate live events at least once a month, according to the research. Consumers cite cost, convenience and the number of subscriptions needed to follow all major competitions as reasons for seeking out illegal alternatives. Even fans who acknowledge the ethical or legal issues around piracy often continue regardless. Ampere’s research suggests moral discomfort does little to deter those who see pirate streams as the simplest way to watch the matches they care about.

‘Rights holders are now investing in forensic watermarking, live monitoring, threat intelligence, and working collectively with industry coalitions and law enforcement for sustained enforcement’

“The fragmented rights landscape has created a confusing and costly environment for fans, where pirate services can aggregate league broadcasts in one place,” observes Monaghan. “When we consider the motivations for pirating, in the UK, Germany, Spain and the US, ‘already paying for a legitimate service and therefore not wanting to pay for another’ comes out as the primary driver (and second in Italy); indeed, monthly pirates tend to actually over-index for access to some of the paid-services which show the most popular leagues in several key markets.

“Consider that in the UK, between the 2014/15 and 2024/25 football seasons, the cost of watching the 15 most-popular club football competitions on a traditional pay-TV package increased from around £60 (for a Sky Sports/BT/TNT Sports package) to over £140 (for Sky, TNT, Amazon Prime, Premier Sports and several other OTT services),” he continues. “Taking just the Premier League and Champions League, the cost increased by over 50% to around £100.”

The financial impact of this behaviour is increasingly visible in rights negotiations, “especially in Western European football, where growth in recent rights cycles has been a challenge”, says Monaghan. “In most cases, the consumers of piracy are largely unimpacted and see little consequence of their activity, meaning there can be little disincentive to pirate – another thing the industry should be seeking to change.”

WBD Sports Europe, which oversees TNT Sports, and LaLiga, points out that piracy is not just a digital nuisance; it’s a structural threat. LaLiga believes that it “reduces the value of broadcasting rights, impacts club revenues (especially among mid- and lower-tier teams), and undermines long-term sustainability”, while WBD points to “pirate IPTV services and illegal streaming platforms undermining not only direct subscription revenue but also longer-term investment in grassroots and league development”.

“IP theft has long-term ramifications for every actor in the sports industry, as it hampers investment in the ecosystem,” agrees McCarthy. “If we want to keep the show alive – retaining high-quality viewing experiences, access to our favourite sports, and the requisite funding to guarantee the industry’s long-term prosperity, we must do everything in our power to tackle IP theft.”

Fighting back

To counter piracy, DAZN has implemented a layered technical response. Invisible watermarking is deployed across premium rights, allowing compromised accounts to be identified and disabled in real time. Visible fingerprints are also used to deter casual re-streaming. Alongside this, DAZN operates advanced monitoring of platforms and distribution channels to track the spread of illegal streams. The objective is to disrupt piracy at source while protecting subscribers’ quality of service.

Sky has adopted a similar multi-pronged approach, combining technology with active enforcement. Although the broadcaster notes that piracy levels in the UK have remained relatively flat in recent years, it continues to view the issue as strategically important. Sky can point to a track record of successful civil and criminal cases, including multi-year prison sentences and damages awards, as evidence that deterrence can work when pursued consistently. Live blocking orders, supported by the courts, and close collaboration with law enforcement have also formed part of its strategy.

At the same time, Sky acknowledges the need to maintain focus on the paying customer. The broadcaster stresses that delivering convenience, quality and value is as important as enforcement. By continuing to invest in rights and improving the user experience, Sky believes it can reduce incentives for fans to seek out illegal alternatives.

Eurovision Services operates in a B2B space where piracy is present but harder to exploit due to the professional equipment involved. The organisation maintains continuous deployment of encryption systems linked to hardware identifiers, such as the BISS-CA protocol developed with the EBU. These systems protect content in highly controlled environments, but last-minute rights additions – increasingly common across live events – remain challenging to secure.

For Eurovision, technical safeguards are central. It cites encryption with tight rights management as by far the best way to protect content. Additionally, watermarking is “efficient to identify the leaks”. Yet it acknowledges that the challenge is an arms race, as pirates often have the resources to keep pace with defensive measures.

Eurovision emphasises that piracy is not only a technical problem. There is a consumer education component: many viewers mistakenly perceive pirated signals as legal services, and the fragmentation of rights across multiple subscriptions compounds the issue. Eurovision Services compares the current state to the music industry’s Napster era, noting that the sector needs to reach a ‘Spotify/Deezer stage’ where consumers are willing to pay for a convenient, comprehensive service.

There is also a perceptual impact. Mediapro observes that pirated streams are often lower quality, with poor resolution, unstable audio and unreliable latency. Over time, “this can reset audience expectations. If fans come to accept degraded quality as the norm, it becomes harder to justify investments in HDR, immersive audio, or enhanced coverage. Quality, both technical and editorial, is one of our strongest tools against piracy.”

Nevertheless, Mediapro believes that quality can also be a defensive tool. By delivering ultra-low latency, rich metadata and the highest production values, broadcasters and producers can offer a demonstrably better experience than pirates. When the content is technically superior and contextually richer, it becomes much harder to justify watching a pirated feed.

As we have noted, LaLiga has been particularly proactive in its anti-piracy efforts, combining enforcement with education and technical measures. Dynamic IP blocking, authorised by Spanish courts, allows the league to shut down pirate streams quickly during live matches. It has also pursued major takedowns of platforms such as DuckVision and RBTV77. On an international level, operations such as Operation Kratos, which dismantled a piracy network with 22 million users, have further demonstrated the potential of coordinated enforcement.

In the past decade, particularly the past two seasons, the organisation has invested significantly in real-time detection technology, expanded partnerships with responsible intermediaries (such as Scaleway, Worldstream, Netsolutions, CDN77 and Akamai, among others), and established key collaborative models with key stakeholders.

Technology and enforcement

Technology providers are providing an ever-changing anti-piracy arsenal. “There has been a major shift from preventive approaches, such as DRM only, to embedding anti-piracy technology requirements directly in rights deals and production workflows,” says Synamedia’s Durand. “Compared to a few years ago, rights holders are now investing in forensic watermarking, live monitoring, threat intelligence, and working collectively with industry coalitions and law enforcement for sustained enforcement.”

“Technology is at the core of how we combat IP theft,” says Sandeep Tiku, CTO, DAZN Group. “We continue to deploy invisible watermarking, including across our premium rights portfolio, such as LaLiga, Bundesliga, F1 and MotoGP, which allows us to trace leaks within minutes and act before streams can spread.

“We also deploy visible fingerprints that help us identify and disable compromised accounts in real time, alongside advanced monitoring that protects subscribers while ensuring we deliver content in the highest quality and best possible format.

“All of this is supported by our dedicated in-house anti-piracy team, who work around the clock to monitor threats and coordinate enforcement, including real-time war rooms on major events.”

‘Piracy is not a nuisance, it is organised digital crime. Regulators must acknowledge this reality and respond accordingly’

Many people see cross-industry collaboration as a necessity. WBD works closely with federations, leagues, ISPs, anti-piracy groups and regulators to mount coordinated enforcement actions. However, the company is clear that stronger legal support is needed to pursue the organised criminal groups behind large-scale piracy networks.

There is also agreement that no single measure will solve the problem. LaLiga urges governments to close legal loopholes and enable faster enforcement against piracy, particularly for live content. It calls for binding legislation requiring intermediaries to remove pirated content during live broadcasts and for regulators to address the role of digital intermediaries in enabling piracy. “Piracy is not a nuisance, it is organised digital crime,” it says. “Regulators must acknowledge this reality and respond accordingly.”

Pirates react and move fast, so the industry’s defences need to as well. And, like most of the sports affected, fighting piracy appears to work best as a team effort.

At FutureSPORT 2025, sponsored by TATA Communications Media, SVG Europe will host a workshop focused on anti-piracy and content protection in sport. The event is taking place at the Amex Stadium in Brighton on 6 November. Find out more: https://www.svgeurope.org/future-sport-2025/programme/