Piracy in live sports: How broadcasters, leagues, platforms and federations are fighting back By Michael Burns Tuesday, October 7, 2025 - 09:16
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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
