ILLEGAL LIVE SPORTS STREAMING FLOURISHING DESPITE INDUSTRY CRACKDOWNS
Ahead of next month’s Super Bowl LX, which NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service hopes will be its largest-ever live viewership (along with the Winter Olympics in Milan, Italy), there is growing concern about the rise in streaming sites offering illegal access to live sports.
A 2025 study found that 69% of sports fans in the United States and Europe have turned to illegal streams as the subscription cost of their platforms rise. In the United Kingdom, approximately 4.7 million adults (9%) confessed to using illegal streams for sports.
Worse still, 58% of sports fans in the United Kingdom now consider illegal streaming to be “socially acceptable,” according to new data from Nielsen — viewing it as a response to an overpriced and complicated legal market to access their favorite teams.
Illegal sites in the United Kingdom, which showcase soccer, boxing, tennis, cricket, as well as movies and TV shows, reportedly attracted 1.6 billion views in the first half of 2025. Analysts contend the trend could see sports leagues worldwide lose upwards of $28 billion annually in revenue due to piracy.
In addition to revenue loss, illegal live streams pose a risk to the end user. A study by OpenText Security Solutions found that nearly every illegal streaming service exposed users to malicious or misleading content, including malware, spyware, phishing, junk security software, explicit content, fake operating systems and related online scams.
The NFL, NBA and UFC have urged the U.S. government to update the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). They argue that live sports are uniquely vulnerable because their value depreciates instantly after the event ends, requiring faster, “real-time” takedown powers.
In 2023, Peacock and EverPass, a media platform distributing live sports and entertainment content to commercial businesses, created Peacock Sports Pass to discourage individual third party subscribers from using personal subscriptions at commercial businesses.
“Accessing ‘NFL Sunday Ticket’ and Peacock sports content in commercial establishments such as bars, restaurants, and other businesses through unauthorized channels and residential subscription services (a Peacock subscription) or other unauthorized third-party platforms is unlawful,”
EverPass wrote in a post.
The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), whose members includes Amazon, Disney, Netflix, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, last month hailed the shutdown of the pirate site Streameast, calling it a “resounding victory” for the entire live sports ecosystem.
“Piracy isn’t a harmless shortcut as it exposes consumers to real risks and drains resources from India’s creative economy,” Larissa Knapp, EVP and chief content protection officer at the Motion Picture Association, said in a statement. “Our actions make clear that ACE will relentlessly pursue and dismantle illegal operations so audiences and creators can benefit from a secure, sustainable marketplace.”
X, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok all say that they remove illegal content streams from their platforms as soon as they are made aware of it.
Source: mediaplaynews.com
