The Underground World of Illegal Streaming

The Athletic FC. How do you watch your Premier League football at home? Yeah, kind of streaming services. Sort of streaming services. Cheap streaming services. However much some might struggle to say the actual word, the culture of illegal streaming is alive and kicking. So if there are better services available elsewhere, then consumers are going to move in their direction. It's hitting the leagues and the broadcasters hard. There's a big group of people fighting parasy across the region. While criminals make hay while the sun shines. It was complex because of the monies that they were making and the concept of how they worked together. And it presents a crisis for football. Sports Parasy poses an existential threat. I'm Adam Levantal, senior writer and broadcaster from the Athletic. And for the last six months I've been looking into the underground world of illegal streaming, the culture, the crime and the crisis. So do you think that's more and more common nowadays? No one in my age is paying 18 plus to watch football. I think the fragmentation makes people extremely eagerly way more. I'd rather pay $10 a month for an IPTV service just to catch all the games. Illegal streaming is a complex issue. Someone described it to me as being Mac and Onion, with layer after layer. If you're not familiar with it, illegal streaming or piracy means the online consumption of games without the copyright owner's permission. Via a modified TV box or stick device that you plug into your TV, watching via an app or an unauthorized website. If those options sound familiar to you, you're not alone. You can't get to all the games. So we stream where we need to. Watch it on Sky when a can because we've got a Sky Box at home. But when games aren't available on Sky, obviously you go through different means like fire sticks and stuff out to watch it. Watch it that way. Because it's a lot cheaper. If I'm not down the pub then I'll be using a fire stick or a website to watch it. It's so much cheaper than trying to pay for a sky subscription where you're paying 500 quid a year or you can pay 60 quid for the year. I can tell which one is easier to justify as such. I watch it on a fire stick. Modified fire stick? Yeah. How much do you pay? 80 quid. Is that all? Yeah. And do you think that that's coming? How old are you? 23. So do you think that's more and more common nowadays that that's just almost part of the course that people are doing this? Yeah. I know at work at least five to ten people that probably do it as well. Because it's just too expensive to do it the normal way to be honest. I use a VPN to change my country that I'm watching football from. And then from there I log into a legal site in that country to watch the football for zero or a lot less pennies. I can't watch the real clock games on the telly. And I can't afford to go and watch them all in the stadium because the price is too much. And I can't afford every single stream in sight there is because it's hundreds of pounds a month. So you watch the three o'clock's anyway you come. Well that was a host of England football fans here at Wembley, the historic home of football ahead of the international against Wales. Cost, convenience and not wanting to comply. Some of the reasons given behind illegal streaming to watch Premier League football legally isn't cheap or particularly easy in the UK. You need sky or TNT sports to watch them all on average. That costs 40 to 80 pounds per month. But there are cheaper options like now TV for example. In the States games are on USA Network, NBC, CNBC and Peacock. You can pay anything from $10.99 to $60 a month depending on how much you want. We'll look at the role of the 3pm blackout, VPNs and generational consumer expectations later on. But let's give you some hard data on the amount of people that have moved away from legal viewing options. So the Athletic commissioned an exclusive poll from Market Research Company UGov Sport. We wanted to see how many people had watched an illegal stream over the last six months. The results found that 9% of UK adults had watched sport predominantly football illegally since March 2025. That's 4.7 million people or Wembley filled to its 90,000 ct capacity 52 times. Another 9% so another 4.7 million people said they weren't sure or preferred not to say. And remember this is only people over 18. The top three methods people used were websites, fire sticks and other IPTV devices and social media streams. It's important to point out here that although fire sticks have an association with Amazon, it's become a catch all term to include all sorts of devices and brands. And on their own, these devices aren't illegal. It's the software loaded onto them that causes the problem. Now we'll have more on that UGov research later on, especially when it comes to what people worry about if they do at all. But the problem appears to be even more acute elsewhere in the world. Global consultants brand Finance found that 44% of 12,000 respondents across six continents said they considered watching football on unofficial streams last year with people in Saudi Arabia, China and India top of the list. It's a huge problem. Sports piracy poses an existential threat. That's Larissa Napp, former high ranking FBI agent now executive vice president and chief content protection officer of the motion picture association who've waged a decades long war against piracy. Obviously for the studios, the existential threat is a pre-release copy that gets out on the internet. A live sports broadcast loses all commercial value once the game is done, right? The score is out there. Everybody knows the outcome. So that is an even harder space to work in. The estimate losses of over 28 billion right in potential revenue that sports loses every year. It's why the Premier League, the most watched and lucrative making £4 billion a year takes it so seriously. They can't eradicate it, only disrupt it. The Singapore office is principally, but not exclusively about piracy. That's Premier League CEO Richard Masters speaking at the leaders sports conference in October. So Premier League has a substantial commitment to financial broadcasters that will protect your rights, the rights that you have purchased so you can get the best possible return investment. So there's a big group of people fighting piracy across the region. Last season, the Premier League via court sanctioned blocking orders shut down around 600,000 illegal streams. Sky Sports, the main broadcaster in the UK showing 215 of the 380 top tier games call piracy a serious threat. They say they invest heavily to protect the value of their content using advanced tech, including AI, to disrupt networks. Piracy is a very serious issue. It's certainly significant. That sky's chief sports officer Jonathan Lickt speaking at a season launch event in August. There's a real concern that's despite it in the galaxy and the links to organised crime that it's been normalised. In a way, I think that's dangerous for everyone. That's dangerous for the industry. It's right about it being normalised. It's easy to engage with illegal streaming nowadays. With just a few messages, codes and clicks, you can be up and running in a matter of minutes. Okay, I'm in my office at home and I've been told by a contact that I should go to Facebook Marketplace and search for fire sticks. So in front of me, I've got pages full of pictures of fire sticks and they've all got WhatsApp numbers to contact. It's very open and to be honest, it's quite surprising that you're able to just use a mainstream platform like this just to get in touch with people who are supplying something that is clearly illegal. But I've also been told that sellers get around the algorithm by being clever with the keywords. We will get Facebook's response on this later on, but let's just pick one of the numbers at random and give it a go. Right, so I've asked what channels I can get with this one offering and this is the reply. All sports channels, they say. And it works on all devices. Okay, let's ask how much it's going to cost. A typing, here we go. 30 pounds for three months, 40 pounds for six months or 65 pounds for a year. Right, let's ask what I need to do now. They've asked if I've already got a fire stick, which I'll say I do. So they say download the download app onto my device and then enter a six digit code, which has just come through, but I'm going to stop there. Later, with further investigation, you'll find out more about the people trying to sell me that service and why I didn't want to put any unauthorized app on my device. Instead, I've just arrived at someone's house that I know on this Saturday afternoon who already has an illegal streaming service. Now, before I go in, we need to speak about the 3pm blackout, which is another factor in this hold debate. Football, millions played, millions more fun of it. And those who win are heroes to the world. The Saturday 3pm Blackout, Blocks Games being shown in the UK between 2.45 and 5.15pm. It was first thought up in the 60s by Bernlee Chairman Bob Lord who wanted to protect the sanctity of people going to games rather than watching on TV. It wasn't needed until the mid 80s in the UK, but it's still a regular bone of contention. The blackout has done two main things. It means that anyone who wants to watch 3 o'clock kickoffs on Saturday in the UK has to be at the game or watch on a pirate stream. Outside the UK there's no blackout. Here's a quick audio postcard. I am on holiday, it's August and the sun is shining here in France. And I'm just popping inside moving away from the pool because I wanted to check in on the second round of Premier League matches and it is just past 4 o'clock here in France, just past 3 o'clock. In England and there on the screen in front of me via Canal Plus, I can watch all of the 3pm kickoffs back in England, right here, right now, ones that you can't watch live in England. So the TV feeds supplied to overseas broadcasters are pirated and consumed by people in the UK and around the world. Meanwhile, the Premier League and broadcasters have systematically moved games away from 3pm on Saturday, so various other slots can be commercially exploited. When the Premier League started in 92.93, 66% of games were Saturday 3pm. Last season, it was down to just 33%. Even the UK's future king, Prince William said recently, he finds it irritating when he can't watch Asdom Villa at 3pm on Saturday. UEFA's article 48 governs the blackout rule now. It says at least 50% of games in the top two divisions have to be Saturday 3pm for it to apply. Well, since the start of last season, that threshold hasn't been met 11 times, but it stayed in place. It stays because it's baked into broadcasters with sky and TNT, and although there can be seasonal exemptions, it's unlikely to see significant change until the rights come up for grabs again in 2029. Non-league Hartler Paul supporting presenter Jeff Stelling may rant like this on Talksport. If Grimsby are playing more than Saturday afternoon, it's cold, wet and miserable, and Manchester United against Manchester City is on TV live at 3pm. How many people are going to go to Grimsby against more than I can tell you how many, a big fat zero, and that will be the end of clubs at a lower level. But in that exclusive research carried out for the Athletic by Yugub Sport, there's a different view. 57% of football fans opposed the blackout in 2025. Only 26% of the players are 26% supported it with the rest neutral or not sure. 42% of matchgoing fans say they're more likely to attend games in person because of the blackout, which does feed into Stelling's concerns, but this next result is just as powerful. 77% of football fans would be interested in watching 3pm kickoffs live on TV. I'm Tom Gray-Treks, I'm Chair of the Football Supporters Association. It is a difficult way, but the FSA on behalf of matchgoing supporters has long had a position that the 3pm blackout is justified because of ensuring that clubs and teams and leagues further down the pyramid are not disadvantaged by TV broadcasts happening at a time when they're most likely to be playing. But it is also the case that many fans are starting to adjust their views, particularly fans of larger clubs who may find it difficult to be able to get to games themselves, but it doesn't mean that it's a very straightforward issue in the way it might have been in the past. Now, I mentioned that technically the blackout could have been lifted a number of times recently, but it wasn't. It included the day I went to watch the action on an illegal stream. Back to the here and now, Saturday October the 4th, let's just head in to this person's house who has the illegal streaming device. There's some big games kicking off very shortly, and I've kind of been given the keys, so let's go in. And if I click it on, it comes up with sky glass, although we know that that's not the real thing. There's a menu for live sports and both Arsenal and Manchester United are playing. And there you go. And then I can just switch it over and watch Manchester United against Sunderland. And there are two games that without an illegal streaming device, just like this, I wouldn't be able to watch in the UK. Now, I've been watching for about ten minutes or so now, and across both games, the picture quality isn't great at times, and judging by some of the graphics that have been popping up on the screen, you can tell that they're coming from a variety of different sources from different countries as well. Now, the person whose subscription this is pays £50 for the year, direct into someone's bank account, I have more on that later on, but that gives him all of the games and the competitions. Now, he didn't want to be identified by doing an interview. That's why he's let me into the house by myself. So this is an actor's voice on why he chooses to have an illegal streaming device. It's down to cost, not having to pay multiple subscriptions and the availability of matches. I don't associate this with larger criminal activity. Identity theft is more of a concern, sure. But you know, someone has your details. You just don't weigh up. We don't really think about the criminal side all that much. So as a consumer of an illegal stream, are you committing a crime? Yes, they are. Here in Sharp from the Federation against Copyright theft, also known as fact. It's been a stab-list that they're committing crimes under the fraud act. And it's something that we do as well put the message out there because we'd rather people stopped and we don't want to go down the road prosecuting. They are committing criminal offence. They could get swept up in some very investigations. And it's not something they should be flasered about. The bigger focus is on the suppliers of the streams. In the US, the Protecting Lawful Streaming Act passed in 2020 in the UK meanwhile. Some of the cases we use conspiracy to defraud because there is a clear conspiracy between a number of people. And that's something that's very easy for a jury to understand in a court, for instance. In other cases, we use the Copyright's Designs and Patterns Act because there's copyright offenses and they're the ones that usually underpin the other offenses. But there's a whole graph of legislation that we can use. In 2023, an illegal streaming service called "Flawless" found out exactly what punishments were possible. Over five years, they'd amassed £7 million in profits via their 50,000 subscribers. But after a long-term investigation, Ringleader Mark Gold was convicted of fraud and contempt of court and sentenced to 11 years in prison. In total, five men working on the service were jailed for 30 years. In fact, worked in collaboration with the Premier League and various police forces across the country on the case. It was probably the biggest we've done, which is something we didn't always see right from the start. It became apparent as we investigated it and it became exceedingly complex as a result. So it was complex because the numbers of people involved, it was complex because of the manifestation of the service and the amount of time it spent to ensure that we could turn the computer forensics into evidence. It was complex because of the monies that they were making and the concept of how they worked together, the individuals working together in a conspiracy. So it was a major case, ground breaking case, as you can see from the impact on their lives. What happened to them in prison? Now hidden away at Facts HQ is the forensics room. A treasure trove of evidence that's been gathered over the years. We've had to disguise one of the key investigators' voice to avoid him being identified and can't name him. He analyzes all of the items seized. So we've got shelves and shelves with evidence from various cases, a variety of computers, laptops, chat logs, images, spreadsheets, documents, etc. We're covering deleted files. We also capture evidence from the fire sticks or illicit set-top boxes, video capturing the content so that that can be displayed to a judge and jury in court showing that I was able to access primarily content or a 3-p. of focal match or so on and so forth. Still to come, we'll analyse whether a more equitable future is possible where streaming illegally doesn't feel like the only option. find out how easy it is for the piracy market to grow. And they share that key with everyone else, so that everyone else can go into your house. There's shocking information about what illegal streamers could be doing with your data. You're giving them access into your home network and you're good with that? Plus, we go behind the scenes of that big stream east sting in Egypt. Majority of the traffic going to that service came from the US, from Canada, UK. [MUSIC PLAYING] Just to let you know that this part includes references to child abuse. [MUSIC PLAYING] This is the underground world of illegal streaming, a special episode of the Athletic FC podcast. So we know about the culture, what about the crimes that underpin the piracy industry? Now, I was out for pizza with a friend whilst doing this investigation, and he asked, how did the pirates get the feed in the first place? Well, to avoid going down a tech rabbit hole of coding, torrents, and leaching, illegal streamers commonly choose one of four slices of piracy pizza, hacking legitimate streams, scraping the web for live streams and brief distributing them, setting up their own streaming servers, or getting access to a corrupt industry insider. Imagine that your house has one lock, and they clone your key to open the lock. That is what the pirates do. That's Valentine's Sea Brands from Video Tech Company Unified Streaming. And in order to prevent that there are several ways to do that, but it's hard because it's complicated, and you need to invest in it to prevent pirates to steal your content or go into your house. That's what we tried to do. That's a welcome all game. So that means you can prevent the current hacks, and then at some point, something else will pop up. And then you-- you know, it's an active game. It's not something you can just throw money at, and it's done to grow it or something else, and then it's leaky again. Now, piracy has been around for centuries, from the high seas when people use the Latin word pirata, which means one who attacks. To the 17th century, when people feared the impact of the printing press. In the early 2000s, when Sweden's pirate base started sharing music and films, their justification was anti-capitalist and pro-freedom of expression. I spoke to an ex-pirate who operated back then, speaking anonymously to protect his safety. And he's uncomfortable about paid for piracy services. None of us like them, he said. One pirate, not liking another, is a bit like that pointing Spider-Man meme. But my source feels a Robin Hood spirit back then has been replaced by people being hoodwinked by criminals wanting to make money. A lot of consumers will see this as a victimless crime, and sticking it to the man, basically. What's your take on that? Having come from prior law enforcement, I think it's amazing that folks still think that there is no consequence. And I can unpack this a little bit. That's Larissa Napa again. The prior law enforcement she mentions was spending 28 years in the FBI before joining the Motion Picture Association. So we all take risks every day, right? Do we decide to speed? Do we decide to drive without a seatbelt? Do we decide to leave our doors and windows unlocked? And all of it seems to be seemingly inocuous. It doesn't really matter, right? Until you get into an accident. Using illegal apps is another one of those risks that consumers are taking. So you are loading a piece of software that in of its essence is illegal and owned by criminals. And you're putting it on your most trusted devices and you're connecting it to your network. So you're totally good with that. So you're willing to put something on your phone where you probably have your banking information, all of your personal contacts, photos, audio recordings. And you're OK with that to have this exist in the same ecosystem. Coming from the investigative standpoint, if we can get on somebody's phone somehow, it's very easy to escalate and move sideways, laterally, into other applications on a system. So you're essentially giving a bad guy a back door into your most treasured object. And while you might think a fire stick is far removed, it's the same principle. You're taking a dodgy box and you're putting it into your home network. Most people now have cameras in their house. Most people have other devices in their house that listen. That's a treasure trove of intelligence. We'll come back to Larissa later. But she mentioned photos and access to cameras there. Two things relevant to a case that I looked into during the course of this investigation, which highlights the sinister motives of some pirates. During a raid of an illegal streaming gang, police discovered that one of the ring leaders possessed indecent images of children on his devices. He was also convicted of multiple offenses of voyeurism, where someone observes or records someone doing a private act without their consent for the purposes of sexual gratification. He was jailed and given a 10-year sexual harm prevention order in addition to being found guilty of piracy. Sources working in this area also told me photos and videos harvested from devices sometimes doctored using AI and deep-fake technology, a sold on the dark web. A playground for criminals who can earn money from the data that they gather from you, like when you pay for your illegal streaming service over WhatsApp and hand over your bank details. Crime stoppers, an independent UK charity, say 5 million users experienced the virus, fraud, or personal data theft as a result of watching illegal streams just last year. Even though I didn't go through with purchasing the illegal streaming service on WhatsApp earlier or handing over my bank details for obvious reasons, I did want to find out more about who I was swapping messages with. I handed over the WhatsApp number to anti-piracy organization, Friend MTS. What came back was surprising. It just so happened, they already had this person on their watch list and had started an investigation. By extracting his bank details, they found that it was registered to a UK business that appeared to be a front to mask the elisted activity. The business was nothing to do with illegal streaming. It's why when they went through with the test purchase, he told them not to use any words related to illegal streaming in the reference. Using network forensics, they identified where he was streaming from and other associated businesses and one name kept cropping up. That kick started an on-the-ground covert surveillance operation that isolated the target to a UK property where they lived with a number of other people. The information has now been passed to the police for further investigation. It's why I've not been able to tell you everything I know. But as a result of looking into this case in particular, I wanted to find out about how the distribution pyramid works and whether it's easy to become a reseller. OK, so I'm back in my office now and back on Facebook Marketplace where on one of the ads, it offers the chance to become a reseller, selling a product that is a knocked off version of Sky Glass with all the sports channels available, just like the one that I was watching earlier on. So let's get in touch. So first up, I've said that I want to become a reseller and the reply is that I need credit. So he says that one credit gives the customer access to one month on the platform. And 12 credits will cost me 20 pounds. He says I could charge customers anywhere up to 60 pounds for a year long subscription, so make 40 pounds profit. 100 credits will cost me 160 pounds. 200 would cost 300 pounds, so slightly better deal. One of his resellers, he says, sells 300 a month. Well, I'm not going to send any more messages. I'm not going to become an illegal streaming service seller, but I'll tell you about an alleged gang in a few moments time that make far more than just a few hundred pounds profit. Now, we focused on the purchase and supply of illegal streaming services on Facebook. They say fraudulent activity is not allowed and remove it when they can, but say reviewing millions of ads isn't without challenges, and they invest in tech to tackle an industry-wide issue. So to that gang I mentioned, at the start of November, just as we were putting the final touches on this investigation, I learnt of a raid that took place in West Yorkshire, in the UK. An intelligence-led operation targeted one suspected reseller of IPTV services. He was identified by his bank account, traced and arrested. Police believe he was part of an organized crime group with three others, each with a network of resellers under them, believed to be making hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. Search warrants were executed at four properties, and four men arrested on suspicion of copyright and money laundering offenses. Devices were seized and reviewed by the high-tech crime unit. A fifth suspect was also interviewed. All were released on bail pending further investigation. Illegal streaming makes a lot of money for criminal networks and much flows around the world in cryptocurrency. One investigator told me they frequently see companies with $50 million worth of Bitcoin in accounts. Let's focus now. on how one of those big operations was targeted. August 24, 2025. On the outskirts of the Egyptian capital Cairo, not far from the Pyramids, one of the most infamous illegal streaming sites Stream East was about to get hit. "What is Stream East? It's not a single domain, it's not a single website. More than anything, it's a piracy brand." That's Danny Baxter, Senior Investigator for ACE, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment Anti-Piracy Group. They represent 50 media brands, including sports rights holders, and football governing bodies like UEFA. He worked on the Stream East case. "Our investigation started in the late of 2023, with one domain of focus that was brought to our attention by one of our sports rights holders, Stream East.app." The site went onto a watch list for the best part of a year. They monitored traffic, trends, and any IP changes. "Now then we start getting to part two. What other domains are connected to that?" "They were loads. It was linked to 120 domains with a huge audience." "We see that this ring that we have targeted is the largest by far by the number of viewers. The annual visits are north of 1 billion visits. "Urge will be between 1.2 to 1.6." "It was Egypt-based, but watched worldwide." "Majority of the traffic going to that service came from the US, Canada, UK. This is meaningful. That's regenerates a lot of traffic. It's been there for a while and it seems to be resistant to take downs in such from rights holders. That's something that we usually suggest to us that it's a high priority target." The investigation escalated. Network mapping and the use of legal discovery tools to get information from legit platforms that might be providing services led to a key breakthrough. "Specifically in this case, we had the first major clue that pointed out to Egypt with one of the IP addresses that we got in back of the responses." Investigators then followed the money, which surprised surprise involved. "Crypto movements went through that rabbit hole and that led to an offshore shell company that's being funneling the funds to two locations and companies, one in the Asia Pacific region and one in Dubai." "And what we discovered, an Egyptian national heading these two different entities." They dug deeper into a web of diversified investments. "Real estate, gold bars, cash, other crypto forms." The pirate's intention was to spread the funds in as many forms and locations to hide the income from the stream-east revenues. But there's always a trail. "The funds that were passing daily left a big fingerprint." That part of the investigation unearthed a big chunk of income coming from Adverts. Those pop-ups that pollute your eyeballs as you're trying to watch your match. It's often called malvertising in the industry because sites sell ad space to those who want you to click so they can harvest and sell on your data. It's a money spinner for illegal streamers. It's 6.2 million in revenues that were flowing from the advertising company to the owners. "It was a key breakthrough that allowed the case to be handed to Egyptian authorities. It's not always easy to get buy-in from overseas police, especially with different laws, but they were keen." And then, as we see in this case, they schedule a raid. So in the operation, we had 22 officers spread in two locations. They seized all the potential. Devices, funds, some good indications, server access, credit cards that were seized, some transactions. And the financial investigation still continues. Well, that dig into the money uncovered a further $3.6 million in ad revenue, taking the total to nearly $10 million, with $600,000 in cash and cryptocurrency. Plus, evidence of further real estate purchases by the operation linked to the two suspects who were arrested. When the athletic initially reported on the story 10 days after it happened, the reaction was instructive. It was a popular sight. There was sadness. There was also defiance. One Reddit blog claiming to be from the original stream east, who previously been targeted, said they were still up and open for business. "So for the people that saw the story and said, 'No, no, my stream east is still working.' They may well be watching a stream east service, but the one that you took out was the biggest chunk of an illegal organization using that brand." Yeah, that's correct. So we said this is a strong brand, meaning in the sense in the piracy world, and I always find it a bit funny to speak about brands and so on, because it's my terminology, in the legitimate world, and we're using it and so on. Let's get Larissa Naps take on it. With the Motion Picture Association, a main contributor to ACE's efforts. It's really funny, and I was talking with my son the other day about this, and he was like, the article that I had sent him, he's like, it reads like it's a different stream east, mom. And I was like, well, yeah, because stream east, it's a brand that has become so common. And I analogized this to him, he was like, what do you mean by that? I was like, okay, let me put a finer point. So when you say, hey, mom, my nose is runny, can you give me a cleanx? Cleanx is a brand. What you actually mean is tissue. And this is stream east. So we had the prior stream east, and then obviously a bunch more copycat sites came up. The more recent one, stream east, that one, the Egyptian authorities take down, and that was a copycat site. They are related by name. They might be related financially, but obviously, investigation is ongoing. We don't rest on our laurels. I'm under no illusion that I've obliterated the stream east brand off the face of the earth. You know, when we take one down, five more will come up or more, because folks have that brand recognition. We don't will still get at it. If it reconstitutes in a different country, we'll follow the digital breadcrumb trails. So it was a battle one, but not the war. The motion picture association have a most wanted list with high priority targets for the future. They highlight China, India, Russia, and Vietnam as notorious piracy jurisdictions. In fact, in various conversations with people in the industry, there's been mention of war rooms being set up to try and combat piracy as it was happening. It conjures up images of Churchill, underground bunkers, and pieces representing battalions being pushed around a map of the world. Typically, this will be a large scale sporting event. That's Markmore Ready from anti-piracy company Adeto and a war room veteran. You've got to coordinate a lot of operational teams together. You've got a huge amount of information coming in from various sources. You're quite often monitoring multiple sources of pirated content and seeing what impact you're having as you're progressing through the live event. By the various actions, that could be anything from watermarking, fingerprinting to remove the pirated content, to blocking to other disruptive measures. So it's quite a dynamic kind of environment as you could expect a lot of people drinking a lot of coffee and really trying to make an impact. It could just because of the temporal nature of sport, right? The value is at its highest when it's live. So anything that you can do and seconds count can really make a huge difference in that war room environment. It also appears that it's a battle to get people to actually think before engaging in illegal streams. When you gove sport, ask people whether they were concerned about data theft and cybercrime. Two thirds said they weren't. In their eyes, the risk was worth taking. Next, on the underground world of illegal streaming, let's use a footballing analogy. You're on one side. You've got the pirates on the other. Who wins most matches? The pirates. This is a very easy question. It's always the pirates. So what does that mean for the future? So if there are better services available elsewhere, then consumers are going to move in their direction even if that includes piracy. How much would you pay for a Premier League subscription that would give you all of the games? No more than £20. I mean, it'd be an absolute brilliant idea. That's what I think it needs. This is a special episode of the Athletic FC podcast, the underground world of illegal streaming. Now just a quick shout to state all the way until the end because I want your take on all of this. Well this is the International Broadcasting Convention here in Amsterdam which brings together the global media, entertainment and tech communities including all the big sports broadcasters and those that work alongside them and leagues to combat piracy. How do you feel the environment is developing in terms of piracy? How big a problem is it in particular in sports and soccer? The whole industry needs to get together and try to figure out how to combat this issue because the issue is a major one. That's Olga Kornienko, whose co-founder of a company called Easy DRM which stands for Digital Rights Management, a key layer of the piracy onion that I was talking about earlier on trying to help rights holders secure their content. It is the problem of the weakest link. If you have a week phone out there that shares the content or is hacked and they are sharing a new movie or a specific game then once that content is out there it's out there and it doesn't matter if 99% of the websites and services are protecting the content if one is leaking then it's affecting the whole industry. How big an issue then is illegal streaming and piracy for the sports industry? It has become very acute and that has really been a position that's developed mostly for the worst I would say really over the last few years. That's Gareth Suckliff from tech and media researchers, Enders Analysis. The consumer now is so much more nimble. Do you think that the industry needs to catch up rather than, you know, it's the consumers that are to blame? Well, I think that's very fair point. There are better services available elsewhere and there is more innovation and there is more choice than consumers are going to move in that direction even if that includes piracy. Do you see a world in which the funding doesn't necessarily come from the consumer? You could absolutely have highly promoted content that is paid for by a premium sponsor that makes it freely available to all and certainly there are partners out there who are experimenting with that. It is all a question of balance but certainly I think that innovation is one of those things that is a great response to piracy which is that it addresses the fact that people not only want access but they may actually want something different because they are moving faster than for example, broadcasters or content owners are moving themselves. That's for the future which we'll discuss more later but over the course of this investigation we went on a journey with something we've already mentioned quite a lot, the Amazon Firestick. The current version of the Firestick is problematic because it enables piracy. It's important to point out that's Gareth speaking in Amsterdam in September. It is also a broadly risky device for consumer safety in that it provides a very easy path for malware to enter into a home computing environment. There are issues related to the policies around developing apps for that device that Amazon took a certain position on and broadly got wrong. They made it an open computing device that just opened it up to a whole world of nefarious actors. Let's deal with Gareth's claims. First up, Amazon's say pirated content violates their terms and they actively warn people about the harms. On the malware issue during the summer Amazon began to block some of the illegal streaming apps that had been loaded onto devices. Why? Well that's where it gets a little murky. Suggestions from multiple sources said that US law enforcement had made contact with top Amazon bosses because of a national security threat caused by malware emanating from the Asia Pacific region. Now Amazon pushed back on that precise claim and say they don't comment directly on specific interactions with law enforcement. They did say they work with industry partners and relevant authorities to combat piracy though. I asked them directly about four illegal streaming apps that had been disabled and they confirmed that they had, and I quote, "exhibited malicious behavior". Safeguarding our customers' security is of the utmost importance they said and we regularly monitor four and take action against potentially harmful third party apps. Harris also talked about the fire stick being an open computing device. It's long been a frustration of companies like Sky and the Premier League that it was too easy for pirates to load illegal streaming apps onto the device. We believe technology should fade into the background. The screens, the speakers, the way one thing connects to another. It should all be invisible. But Amazon made changes in October. I am so excited to be here today to talk about where TV is going. That's Amazon's vice president of Fire TV, Aiden Marcus. But you want a smarter experience. For that, we're introducing the new Fire TV 4K Select. So it's a new model of the Amazon Fire Stick on a new operating system and the athletic has been told of an expanded anti-piracy effort. Amazon will now block pirating apps on all of their applications, new and old and they've started in Germany and France and will roll out the policy globally. Amazon have worked closely with the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment Collective that Larissa Natt oversees. It's my obligation and my job to pull together the data to help these companies make informed decisions and something that we work with Amazon. A lot of these companies have aggressive programs to prevent illegal content from being uploaded. And that's how they close one whole. Another one pops up because the criminals get creative. And that's why intelligence sharing and partnerships are so critical. Right? Beyond simply the transactional. So in terms of working with Amazon, 100% we work with them, 100% we provide them the data and we're committed to helping them succeed in this space. As Larissa points out, pirates find workarounds and there are millions of old Fire Stick still in circulation. So the issue will certainly not disappear overnight. Speaking of disappearing, remember this guy from earlier, I use a VPN to change my country that I'm watching football from. As promised, let's get stuck into VPNs. Virtual private networks to help full masking device for those that can't access what they want where they live. And so there is this very conflicted story around VPNs that really tell an unusual narrative in terms of what the benefit of a VPN is. Is the narrative that it is good for security for the end user? Or is the narrative really about being able to access content in other markets? Well, circumnavigating geo restrictions using a VPN has its own name. Geopiracy is a concept where consumers use tools like VPNs to circumvent the restrictions in place and access the same content that they want to watch, but for a lower price from a different country. That's James Clark from Geocomply. So the use of VPNs is very big and from data that we see that we find around the third of all internet users use VPN at some point. Over half of them, 51% of them use VPN to access better entertainment content or different entertainment content that they otherwise wouldn't be able to access. But what's more scary for a consumer is not so much that their football match might be disrupted. It's about what are they giving up in return for accessing this free content. And we've done a lot of research into VPNs and particularly the free VPNs which most people favour because they're free. And James says within the terms and conditions of some of them is something potentially worrying. In return for use of their service, you are agreeing to become part of their peer-to-peer network and share not only your IP address but also some of your bandwidth. And as the user, actually you've got no idea who could be using that because those IPs end up in the hands of literally anyone who's using the other end of that VPN. So if the police were to do an investigation to find the source of this criminality, they could well end up finding an IP address that ties back to your home. I wanted to get the take of a VPN provider on the issue. So I approached NordVPN who have partnership deals with leads and Sunderland and a few football podcasts as well, making a strategic decision to step into the industry. But they don't like VPNs being associated with geo-piracy. They say it muddies the policy debate, overstates the harm, and blaming VPNs for some users' violations is like blaming the motorway for speeding. They say it's a market design problem, not a security tool problem, and point to the music industry's response to piracy where peer-to-peer site Napster inspired a new era of Spotify and others. It's something I spoke to Tassau Grebel from software company Castlabs about. How do you solve this issue? The challenge really is on both sides, on the one hand, on the technical side. So we do need to engage in this Wachemol game, figure out what bad actors do and how they are trying to steal content and then see that we close those loopholes and find workarounds for their workarounds effectively. But I think it's also something that is related to how consumers actually perceive the world and consume media today and actually pay for it, and I think maybe some of these business models also need to adjust what users actually expect from a worldwide market in that sense. So how can the Premier League and broadcasters innovate and move towards a more equitable model that has the potential to bring customers back from piracy? Prem Flix is often mentioned as an option, the Premier League going direct to consumer or D to C with their own streaming platform. They've already taken back control of the sale of their media rights from IMG from the end of this season with the birth of Premier League studios. His CEO Richard Masters at Leaders Again. We're putting ourselves in the supply chain, the content supply chain, principally to serve our intouchable broadcasters and so that we have a stronger control over content addressing the audiences. We're entirely open and neutral as to what sort of media entities that we end up working with. And of course we do work with companies that have streaming entities within them, an out-of-the-way in this country, peacock, abroad. We're stepping towards that optionality, but only thing there ever be, and this moment This is not on the horizon where there will be a. a switch on switch off for the Premier League. It will be a mixed economy over time, and he knows when that moment will come. So, if the Premier League were to go it alone with a direct to consumer platform, they'd have to replace broadcast revenue with subscriber revenue. To compete with pirates, it would need to be cheaper, with more option, and certainly Saturday 3PMs you would have thought as part of the bargain. Currently, the Premier League generate £1.6 billion a season from UK TV rights revenue. So, let's concentrate on a hypothetical service just for a UK audience. To make that money back, they'd need 5 million subscribers to pay £26 per month. 10 million subscribers would make it only £13 per month. Funnily enough, although France's current league-er, direct to consumer model, is used as a cautionary tale of moving away from traditional broadcast partnerships too soon, it does have an attractive price point, and that's also £13 per month. Well, I've come here to the home of the current Premier League leaders and title challenges Arsenal to find out if, in a hypothetical world, the Premier League had their own streaming platform, how much would Arsenal fans pay to watch all of the games, whatever the time? Personally, I'd say £20 per month, to watch Arsenal content, all the games, never miss a match, that'd be fantastic. I don't think it's stopping me coming to games either, because it's still quite a reasonable price. No more than £20. Every stream of service is so expensive now, and you can see why people do stream illegally, but obviously, the easiest option is your pub, but then you spend more money on drinks, food, etc. I mean, it'd be an absolute brilliant idea, that's what I think it needs. I mean, to try and stop it, but then you've got to make it worth it. I think the fragmentation makes people stream illegally way more, for sure. I'd pay £15 per month, I'd say. For every game, yeah, happily, I'd pay £15 per month. I don't think there is a price on it. I think people would pay whatever it was. If it was available, I think people would pay it. I think anything in the region of between sort of 1999 to 2009 to 2009 in a month, to watch, not just as Arsenal fans, but just Premier League fans. We're Arsenal fans, we're also football fans as well, so you're naturally going to pay to watch that level of football if you could. I still don't understand why that hasn't been a thing. £50. You pay £50? Yeah. If you get out of the three-club games, because when everybody wants to see is a three-club games. If there was just a Netflix of Premier League Netflix, I think that is personally the way forward. I think everybody would pay for that. I already do. So, that's just a snapshot view, but everyone welcomed it. The problem for the Premier League is it's not necessarily as simple as that. They know people would pay, but going it alone means they take on the expenses too. Studios, broadcast facilities, trucks and cables. Director consumer also means having a fully functioning customer service arm too. Now, the Premier League could offset some of these extra costs with the rising value of their overseas media rights, which went up 27%. But any significant change would come with risk. Many clubs lean heavily on broadcast revenue for competitive wages and transfer fees. Some even borrow against the money they get from the league. Some to try and win titles. Others simply to survive. It's really difficult for the Premier League to experiment because it's such a risk. How can they forward to step away from linear TV when it's so valuable? That's the former CEO of the Premier League, Rick Perry, now the chairman of the English Football League, the EFL, which looks after the other 72 English Football League clubs. One of the things, of course, that we pioneered many years ago and it came to the fall during lockdown was high-follow and streaming. So, we've actually been doing it very successfully. Perry's right. Away from the bright lights of the Premier League, the EFL have offered club-specific streaming options since the start of the 2017-18 season fire a product called iFollow. That includes blackout games available to an international audience which many simply access using a VPN. The EFL's long-standing arrangement with Sky has now also morphed into a mixed model. So, we've got a blend on Sky, essentially, of the format coverage, aid in the better by streaming. So, we should be a testbed for the Premier League in terms of what the new technologies will be, what the new opportunities will be. These are all the sorts of things we should be doing. It shouldn't be, well, the EFL's going to go away and experiment. It should be, in English, football is looking to the future, looking at new strategies. Hey Adam, how is it? Yeah, very good. How are you? Good, good. Roger Mitchell was CEO at the Scottish Premier League on UEFA's Exit Committee and now advises leagues on investment and rights strategy. He previously worked in the music industry when it was facing its own piracy crisis. In his book Sports Perfect Storm, he warns against burying heads in the sand. It'll probably go down the same way. You start having some kind of legal reaction, trying to block it, trying to punish people, whereas the real cause is more existential than that. There's a lot of complacency. You hear it all the time now, Adam. Oh, the big platforms I've got to have sport. It's the only thing that matters. We are the only game in town. We are the different satir happy days. So, I think the industry looks at this in a narrow kind of basis of what's really costing us, can we afford it? And they're missing the point. The point is, is this a product that kids are willingly going to pay for when they've got an option not to pay for it? Having been there and done it, Roger knows why the decision makers don't necessarily want to make waves and cause financial instability. So it appears the piracy can is being kicked down the road for others to deal within the future. But what if there was immediate change and the Premier League made their own platform? And that meant a bit of risk for them and a squeeze on the clubs. The shock absorber is player wages in the last 30 years. Players' remuneration has basically reflected the increase in media values because there's been no money that anybody's made in European soccer. The same will happen in reverse. And I don't think that will affect the supporters one way or the other. Maybe it'll just be exactly the same, but EZike will be on a hundred grand instead of 400 grand, but you've still been the EPL. But surely the Premier League, the biggest and best in the world, is just waiting for the perfect streaming partnership. Everyone thinks who is the future bit of for rights. And it is no longer the generation of Sky and TNT and it's now moved up to a higher level of a global platform, whether that's called Apple, whether it's called Amazon, whether it's called Netflix, you have to think what do they want as content for their business model. And they're not keeping that a secret at them. They're saying I only need the big stuff. I only need the big stuff, whether it's around Christmas Day or Black Friday. If they only want the big stuff, what does that mean for weekend week out sports leagues? And you start thinking there's going to be a real, real shift into which piracy plays. And I couldn't see any scenario where the status quo went ahead. That doesn't mean there isn't a future. I'm just sure it's a different future that will ultimately change how we organize sport. That's where we come to Saudi Arabia. Now, a previous episode of the Athletic FC podcast at what cost Saudi Arabia and Sokka discussed the nation's growing influence on the game. But the Saudis also know a lot about the power of piracy. The nation was involved in a two-year illegal streaming attack on neighboring Qatar, which cost being sports approximately $1 billion in lost revenue. It contributed to the Premier League's decision-making on new castles, Saudi sale. That's been a massive sub-labor. It's still really significant this week as the resolution with being sports at piracy issues. This summer, Saudi Arabia contributed to a potentially game-changing proposition for football, just like Roger was talking about. In part funding both DeZone and FIFA, the club World Cup, was able to be shown free to air around the world. DeZone now is very, very influenced by Saudi Arabia. Maybe we'll be more in the future. DeZone is a global platform. So, they would prefer global rights, just like Amazon won global rights. What have we seen happening in neon just now Adam? We have seen the champions lead coming up with packages for global rights. So, I'll leave you with this. I've got no evidence of this, but I like to think about this. DeZone, financed by Saudi, makes a big, big, big offer for the Champions League for global or just call it European rights. Just say that. But it's condition is that the Saudi teams play in the Champions League. That's what I would do. Now, that may sound like a dystopian future, but the bond between FIFA, DeZone and Saudi is gathering pace. The FIFA Plus streaming platform will officially launch next year. Standing alongside Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, FIFA president Janie and Fantino was smiling as he posted on Instagram that FIFA is reimagining how the world will watch, share and celebrate football. It's more than a platform he says. It's the Foundation. of football's global digital future. Whether people like it or not big changes are happening, whether these sort of steps ease the piracy problem is still a big unknown though. What's certain is those governing the game have to keep up with the cultural direction of travel towards illegal streaming that's underpinning crime rather than football's finances. It's clear a recalibration is needed to ease a coming crisis. Now, we want your thoughts on the illegal streaming issue. In the podcast description, there's a link to an anonymous survey that we'd really appreciate if you would fill in will publish the results on the athletic. And as always, let us know what you think in the comments, too. The underground world of illegal streaming was a special episode of the Athletic FC podcast. It was written and presented by me Adam Levintal, executive producer was Abby Patterson, with additional production from J.Beele.