The illegal streaming of football matches remains a problem for the football industry,
its broadcasters and content producers across the world,
and there few signs that that’s about to change.
In a January 2023 article for The Athletic, Phil Buckingham wrote that “the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy
Alliance (AAPA) produced a report in December that estimated (that) 17 million Europeans aged between
16 and 74 viewed illegal content in 2021”. Of course, the popularity of illegal streams
is no great mystery: why pay for something when it’s available for free? That applies
far and beyond sport or content production. But what, in football specifically, is driving
the demand? First,
it’s important to note that the demand and supply of illegal streaming survives
despite significant legal deterrents. In 2019, a man from Stoke was sentenced to
over 7 years in prison for running the streaming service Dreambox. He was one of three to be jailed
having provided pubs throughout the country with illegal devices which enabled them to
avoid paying proper subscription charges to satellite providers over a 10-year period.
During the trial, it was estimated that Sky and other broadcasters had lost
income of around £10m. Two years later, in 2021,
the operator of TV Solutions, which had provided illegal access to – among other
types of content – Premier League football, was also sentenced to 16 months in jail.
And in early January 2023, it was reported that the West Mercia Police would be visiting
1,000 homes across the country to issue warnings to those on a database of customers
suspected of viewing illegal content - again, including Premier League football matches.
So, the potential punishments for providing illegal streaming services have been well-defined,
and yet the popularity of pirated services shows little sign of
abating – and at great cost to football. In 2019, at the behest of an unnamed Premier
League club, an American sponsorship valuation firm and a London-based company specialising
in digital piracy conducted a survey which revealed that, across a sample of eight games,
each match had an average pirated audience of just over 7 million viewers. Given that the
average audience for a Premier League game shown in England on Sky Sports is just 1.9m (correct
in the 2019-20 season), that’s considerable. It was also estimated that, as a result of that
unofficial audience, each Premier League club was potentially losing up to £1m a
game in lost sponsorship income. So, despite an inferior product,
with matches often being broadcast in a foreign language, underneath
intrusive banner adverts and beside toxic chat windows, streaming remains a preferable option.
What, then, are the factors driving supporters away from
official broadcasters and towards streams? To find out, we asked the Tifo Football
Community over a three-day period, during which 5,876 people responded.
Their answers are compelling. 58% of those 5,876 people told us that they
illegally stream matches. Asked which leagues they streamed, 21.5% said the Bundesliga,
22% said Serie A, and 30.7% said LaLiga. By far the most popular, however, was the Premier League:
94.6% of respondents answering “yes” told us that they streamed Premier League matches.
Asked why they choose to stream those games rather than watch through official channels,
59.8% said that the subscription was too expensive. Our respondents
weren’t limited to one answer, and 59.7% also said that they chose to
stream because the match they wanted to watch wasn’t legally available.
Even though only 29% of our respondents lived in the United Kingdom, the lack of availability was
likely a consequence of British broadcasting laws. Between 2.45pm and 5.15pm on a Saturday,
it’s prohibited to show live football on British television. The 3pm Blackout,
as it’s commonly known, applies to live football from anywhere in the world, but it means that for
fans without a ticket to a 3pm Saturday kickoff, there is no legal way of watching their team.
Unsurprisingly, rather than following on social media or livescore services, many supporters
choose to hunt out a stream instead. And given the lack of a legal alternative, it’s no surprise
that they’re willing to tolerate that patchy quality and an unfavourable experience to do so.
But, although by a slim margin in our survey, the cost of official subscription is the bigger driver
towards illegal streaming – particularly so at the dawn of an anticipated global recession and,
more locally, in the midst of the cost-of-living crisis in the UK.
And yet subscription cost has only increased in recent years. In 2019, Amazon Prime became
a Premier League broadcaster in the UK, alongside Sky Sports and BT Sport, meaning that viewers had
to be subscribed to three different providers to see all the televised games across a season.
Added to this, according to a report conducted by Bloomberg.com, Amazon’s entrance into the
market has coincided with an increase in cost to the consumer. Prior to the streaming giant
acquiring a rights package, the cost to watch all televised Premier League games
in a season was £540. By the end of 2022, Bloomberg estimated, that had risen to £700.
The UK is also the most expensive place in the world to watch the Premier League. As expected,
this is because it’s native to the UK, where football is by far the dominant sport,
but the comparison is still startling. According to a Premier League Index
created by the website Sporticos and assuming the cheapest offers available,
subscribing to a complete season in the UK costs twice as much as it does in the USA and France,
over £350 more a year than it does in Qatar, and £400 more than it does in Germany.
That means that Jon Mackenzie, JJ Bull and Joe Devine all pay, at best, £605.88 a season to watch
the Premier League, while Seb Stafford-Bloor, who lives in Germany, parts with just £210.85.
On top of this, unrestricted by the Saturday 3pm blackout, Seb – like others outside the
UK - is actually able to watch more of the games and with greater flexibility.
Of course, these inequities aren’t a justification for illegal streaming or a defence of it,
but within the confines of our survey, they do help to explain why it remains an
option for so many fans, and what non-legal means there are to potentially change that.