La pirateria sportiva esplode nel Regno Unito con 3,6 miliardi di streaming illegali e l’aumento dei bookmaker del mercato nero
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/jan/15/sports-piracy-explodes-uk-illegal-streams-black-market-bookmakers?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
di wappingite
30 commenti
The problem with music piracy was almost 100% solved with first very slick ways to buy and own
digital music – iTunes, and then music streaming with Spotify and other services.
Sure Spotify and Apple make a lot of money and squeezed the producers, but everyone accepted that they would be getting less, and the prize was almost totally eliminating piracy – for the majority it’s just not worth bothering getting hold of illegal music as the legal services are far too convenient and well priced.
Sports streaming is expensive, the services themselves are geo-locked and clunky, prices go up every year. If your sport is niche it might barely get coverage or will be way overpriced or you end up googling relentless at the end of every season to find out who has the rights next. And if you’re following a premier league team you need multiple subscriptions to watch the games (and not even get all of them yet).
The piracy is caused by the sports industry’s own greed.
Come up with a reasonably priced slick service without silly restrictions and people will flock to it.
And just look at this:
>The report argues that sports streaming is being deliberately used to take illegal gambling into the mainstream, having been developed initially to target heavy loss-making punters and vulnerable individuals excluded by the regulated industry.
>“Unlicensed gambling is by far the largest and most prevalent ‘media partner’ to the criminal business of illegal streaming of sports events,” said Ismail Vali, founder of Yield Sec.
First they tried to link movie piracy with FUNDING TERRORISM as if downloading a torrent of a movie gives cash to Islamic Jihad.
That didn’t work as it was ridiculous, now it’s ‘if you watch an illegal sports stream you will be DRAWN IN to ILLEGAL GAMBLING as a VULNERABLE PERSON’.
Which is also ridiculous.
Why can’t they be honest and say they’re anoyed they’re missing out on subscriptions?
“As streaming rights for sports are spread across more platforms, making it harder and harder to legally view all your teams matches in one place, fans are finding one place to view all their teams matches regardless”
I just gave up watching football all together. So expensive with multiple subscriptions and can’t even watch my team every week.
I don’t think this needs a retrospective as to why this is the case. We all know why.
Good luck policing it. The streaming sites and IPTV keep getting better and better while the sports broadcasters get more and more expensive and the games get spread between more and more services.
The stats against the US are fascinating. The difference between UK sport and the US? All the major sports in the US have a fairly affordable official streaming service that lets you watch any and every game you want, costing £18/month or £170 for a year. In the UK, we still have the archaic and daft as shite 3pm game rules, you can’t watch every game, games are split between 3-4 services and it costs roughly £100/month for all of them.
Bonkers.
Yeh, basically everyone I know has got a dodgy stick. As if anyone even if they can afford to is paying for all these streaming services. Taking the piss if they think people are forking out for that.
Would it be good if the BBC had a monopoly on such sports? At least that would fix fragmentation.
The thing people miss when comparing football with music or TV streaming is that in the UK you can subscribe to every sports streaming service paying £100s a month
And you still can’t watch your team!!!!!!
The 3pm blackout needs to be reviewed, it simply doesn’t work for UK audiences
In India, a legal stream of Disney+ Hotstar ( now called Jio Hotstar) which has ALL THE SPORTS IN 4K, costs about £10 A YEAR! Here they expect you to pay £30-50 a month.
Piracy will stop for most when the alternative is an easy and fair priced solution.
Just look at the music industry.
If sky didn’t get so greedy and made their prices so inflated, there wouldn’t be a need to download illegal streams! Deserves them right! 🤣
It’s almost like not being able to watch every game and being charged a fortune to watch barely any games is a bad system.
Make a fair system that’s doesn’t exploit people that’s a fair price and shows ALL games and it will go away.
People will turn to this stuff when companies take the piss.
Remember when Sky sports had the monopoly.. it was £20 a month..
Now it’s
Skysports
TNT
Amazon
Whatever else.
They said it would create competition and increase accessibility..
Stop overcharging and fewer people will pirate it.
The media companies have made their own beds.
If I need 3 different subscriptions just to watch rugby, you can fuck right off.
Look what happened with music, unfortunately people are going to keep doing this and until an AFFORDABLE alternative is offered it will continue to happen.
The writing is on the wall, only a matter of time before a ‘Premflix’ style option is offered.
Dont follow the football but i do follow boxing and ufc i did sometimes used to stream years ago however the pop ups and frozen streams were just too much dazn have came out with a 22.99/month subscription with PPV included so i started a contract with then as its a fair price and isnt actually that greedy for what you get if others followed suit i gaurentee everybody would just pay a subscription for convienence if not anything else
The only way prices will come down is if a major provider like Sky Sports goes bust and clubs need to reorganize financially.
The biggest expense in football is salary and there is no club or league brave enough to reduce salary expenditure for a fairer price for fans.
I don’t pirate sports streams, I can understand why people do it. Watching sports live is inordinately expensive in the UK, even just to do so from home. The main sport I follow is F1 and to watch that through official avenues your paying £300 to £450 in the UK. Just that raw number is absurdly high.
Meanwhile in the US they have a service called F1 TV Premium which is $89.99 annually. I believe Apple will soon get the rights to F1 in the US so their cost will rise to an Apple TV subscription ($99 annually). This only goes to make the UK cost insane by comparison, for arguably a worse service. No wonder people don’t want to pay.
Pandora’s Box has been well and truly opened with regards to illegal streaming of all sorts, and there’s nothing they can do about it, it would seem.
Pisses me off when I pay for sky sports and go to watch a game but no…it’s on TNT and I have to pay another £30 a month
TNT took away EuroSport and made cycling way too expensive to watch
One of the catalysts here is all the reporting. Every day there’s some new article about raids on suppliers of “dodgy” Firesticks providing free Sky Sports, Netflix etc. No one reads those articles and thinks “oh gosh, this is important news”. They just think “damn, how can I get one of those?” and then a few Googles later, they’re up and running.
It’s cheaper to have a VPN + dedicated IP + foreign subscription than pay Sky/TNT/Prime…
I pay for Sky, TNT, Amazon etc. I also have a real life season ticket for the football club I support. However, I use IPTV to watch 3pm away games. I don’t have enough loyalty points to ever get tickets (although I do enter ballots) so that is literally the only way I can watch my team play away at 3pm.
If you think of your team playing away at Fulham, for example, at 3pm – only a maximum of 3,000 people who support your team can legally watch that game, by attending. That is bonkers.
Imagine how much money they could all make if they made the price of these subscriptions anything close to reasonable.
Piracy fell off a cliff when the streaming age began because it was affordable to watch TV. Now that everyone has their own streaming platform and costs are well above what an old cable/Sky subscription cost, piracy is back with a vengeance.
I wonder why that could be …..hmmmmm
The greed from governing bodies and clubs which then pushes streaming platforms to pay more and the fragmentation of each sports on multiple platforms will not stop the illegal stream.
This is exactly what’s happening with video streaming, the fragmentation means you have to choose one streaming platform if any at all.
I get appletv free through my bank and that’s it’s no Netflix, Disney+ etc
When steam came I stopped pirating games. When spotify came i stopped pirating music.
When netflix came i stopped pirating movies/shows.
Never stopped pirating sports because there was never a convenient and fairly prices solution.
Netflix also fked up because they got greedy so I cancelled and went back to dark seas.
Give me fair service and I will gladly pay it.
They can afford it and plan for the loss in budgets. Sod em.
I would happily pay F1 TV to watch F1. I will never pay for sky. Instead, I just don’t watch it. Or watch highlights on C4. Most pubs don’t show it.
It’s crazy that the UK doesn’t reward its on citizens for having the best football league in the world, in fact it actively fights against them to extort them for every penny they can, whilst giving other countries absurdly cheap or free coverage.
This is a symptom of greed. Piracy will significantly drop if you can provide the service for £20 a month.