As my colleague Tim Pearson recently wrote in his blog series about Inside the Mind of a Pirate', high-traffic live events have always been a target for pirates. The opportunity to profit substantially by distributing illegal live or recorded streams to large audiences is often a risk worth taking. Major events such as the FIFA World Cup, the English Premier League, and the Ultimate Fighting Championship, to name a few, are all increasingly reaching a global audience. Combined with the acceleration of digital transformation, piracy is more than ever a significant risk in terms of financial impact and brand reputation for sports rights owners. Therefore, protecting valuable content investments is critical given sports play a key role in providing a sustainable streaming or broadcast model.
When it comes to driving effective action against piracy, the best response involves an in-depth understanding of complex pirate ecosystems to drive optimal enforcement action against crucial content and service piracy targets. The activities can be undertaken by an in-house team or outsourced to anti-piracy specialists such as NAGRA.
I recently sat down with the NAGRA Anti-Piracy team to learn more about what this means in practice. They advocate a three-step approach:
Step 1: Identify The Targets
Collecting intelligence is the first vital component to help focus on the main hubs of the piracy problem. NAGRA Anti-Piracy Services components such as our Threat Intelligence service crawls the Internet 24/7, 365 days a year. This helps to discover and analyse storefronts proposing pirate services. These include dedicated websites, offers within online marketplaces, social media pages, Kodi repositories, app stores, playlist-sharing sites, CDN and multi-DRM logs and forums. They'll show the detail on pirate services including content offerings (such as pay-per-view (PPV)), language(s), pricing, payment processors, supported user devices, site certificates, Google Analytics IDs, social media accounts, DNS records, links to other sites and much more. To conflate this data NAGRA uses proprietary popularity ranking algorithms to estimate the relative popularity of each service, categorized across geographical markets. This pinpoints the most impactful targets and helps to prioritize customers' valuable resources.
Step 2: Explore The Wider Environment
With the intelligence sourced and collated, the next step in a comprehensive anti-piracy strategy is to efficiently target investigation efforts toward the paths of most interest with a view to identifying enforcement actions. NAGRA teams build extensive intelligence on criminal organizations by automatically gathering, correlating, and processing data from a multitude of internal and external data sources, including NAGRAs proprietary data feeds. Repetitive patterns are detected and graphical representations of pirate ecosystems created which visually expose critical actors and infrastructure. This highlights links between entities that may have been overlooked in traditional investigations. These exploration efforts can drastically reduce investigator workload by enabling rapid extraction of relevant information from large datasets, selecting what is useful, and discarding what is not..
Step 3: Take Decisive Action
With targets identified and validated through a comprehensive view of the wider landscape, the final stage is to take decisive action against those profiteering from the content investments of others. This stage can require investment and effort to track, document, and prosecute piracy. While some operators have dedicated in-house teams to enforce their anti-piracy strategy, NAGRA can provide actionable investigation reports, help streamline legal action, or engage directly with law enforcement. NAGRA is also working closely with organizations worldwide, such as AVIA - through their Coalition Against Piracy (CAP) - and the Alianza Contra Pirateria de Televisi n Paga in Latin America - that broaden their approach to piracy through multi-disciplined consortia of companies that all have a role to play in apprehending the pirates.
NAGRA in Action
As a strategic partner, NAGRA has supported several major sports rights owners such as beIN Sports and CANAL+ through effective solutions and strategies to protect content and revenue, across both managed and unmanaged devices. But we also provide different elements of a multistage approach to help our customers identify piracy threats, undertake analysis and investigations, and enable legal actions.
Another key tool required for the fight against piracy is Forensic Watermarking. Included as part of the NAGRA Active Streaming Protection framework, Forensic Watermarking plays an essential role in identifying devices or distribution networks involved in illegal subscriptions. And with most operators offering Broadcast and OTT services, a mix of different watermarking solutions are often required to sharpen understanding of piracy patterns and make the right decisions. Client-side watermarking implementation can be very effective on set-top boxes. However, for OTT services pirates rely on older OTT devices and can bypass apps by exploiting DRM vulnerabilities. This is where network-based solutions also play a part in the game, as watermarking is inserted at the CDN level, preventing the pirates from relying on client-side vulnerabilities.
Get In Touch To Learn More
With major live sporting events and other premium content providing a significant financial opportunity for pirates, a successful anti-piracy strategy requires a constant re-evaluation of the techniques used to adapt to constantly changing pirates plans. This should be coupled with a strong partnership with the operators, to not only shut down pirate redistribution networks, but also proactively take measures to
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
01/12/2025
IRVINE, Calif. Wooden Camera has introduced its new Accessory Collection for the Canon EOS C50. The new lineup includes a low-profile, gimbal-ready cage, expand...
01/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has released a tentative agenda for its Dec. 18 Open Commission Meeting that will include a vote on a report an...
01/12/2025
In most years, a graph of annual local TV ad spending is about as predictable as an electrocardiogram of a reasonably healthy patient in a doctor's office. ...
01/12/2025
Many industries have seen big-ticket hardware turn into software. Switchers, though, demand a combination of real-time performance and sheer bandwidth that has ...
01/12/2025
GENEVA Shanghai will host the next quadrennial Radiocommunication Assembly (RA-27) and World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-27), Oct. 11-Nov. 12, 2027. This...
01/12/2025
NEW YORK Just in time for Giving Tuesday tomorrow (Dec. 2), the Broadcasters Foundation of America is seeking out donations to help television and radio industr...
01/12/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Net Insight CEO Crister Fritzson has informed the company's board that he will retire from the video transport and media cloud technology ...
01/12/2025
As the festive season approaches, RT Supporting the Arts is proud to showcase a...
01/12/2025
Researchers worldwide rely on open-source technologies as the foundation of their work. To equip the community with the latest advancements in digital and physi...
01/12/2025
Festive specials of Christmas in Kilmainham presented by Marty Whelan, High Road Low Road, Callan Kicks the Year and Keys to My Life
Ring in the New Year with ...
01/12/2025
Architect and television presenter Hugh Wallace, best known to RT audiences as a long-serving judge on Home of the Year, has died at the age of 68.
In a state...
28/11/2025
Nadia Fall attends the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Brides at the Egyptian Theatre on January 24, 2025, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Donyale West/...
28/11/2025
It's easy to ignore those little red update available badges. But when it ...
28/11/2025
WASHINGTON Federal Communications Commission has released a tentative agenda for the December Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, December 18, 2025 ...
28/11/2025
The Professional Fighters League is looking to super-serve fans of mixed martial...
28/11/2025
Fubo has released in beta on select Roku devices a new feature that lets users display up to four simultaneous streams at once....
28/11/2025
The WNBA playoffs and Week 4 of the NFL regular season highlight the list of live sports events airing on television this weekend....
28/11/2025
The 32nd class of honorees to the B+C Hall of Fame took to the stage at New York's Ziegfeld Ballroom on September 26 for a gala induction event. Click below...
28/11/2025
We hold in our hands the very last Next Text for Next TV, the weekly back-and-fo...
28/11/2025
DirecTV said it made a deal with EchoStar to buy EchoStar's video businesses, including satellite-TV provider Dish TV and virtual MVPD Sling TV, for $1 plus...
28/11/2025
The Broadcasting+Cable Hall of Fame, the premier industry event paying tribute to the influencers, innovators and shining lights of broadcast, cable and streami...
28/11/2025
Friday 28 November 2025
Sky Sports x Slawn drop limited-edition football jersey...
28/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz shows resilience in a challenging environment, revenue exceeds t...
28/11/2025
Unwrapped: The Toy Show Appeal - airing this Sunday on RT One and RT Player- s...
27/11/2025
LONDON Vizrt has added several AI-driven advanced features offering improved speed, intelligence and accuracy in the newest version of its media asset managemen...
27/11/2025
Prime Video has launched AI-powered video season recaps in a beta version for select English-language Prime Original series in the U.S., a move Amazon is callin...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Netflix's Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders Marks a Grand...
27/11/2025
27 Nov 2025
GSMA brings M360 Eurasia 2026 to Samarkand in partnership with VEON...
27/11/2025
Tahar Rahim and Izuka Hoyle star in the gripping six-part Sky Original from Acad...
27/11/2025
Thursday 27 November 2025
Sky Arts Reveals the Nation's Greatest Basslines - and Queen Reign Supreme
The UK's most iconic basslines have been revealed...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Stranger Things 5': Prepare for One Last Adventure With O...
27/11/2025
The media industry has a paradox at its core. It's an industry built on light, color and imagination, yet behind the scenes, it's powered by one of the ...
27/11/2025
Rating reflects rating progress across areas including policies, diversity & inclusion, health & safety and Net Zero leadership
Winchester, UK, 27 November 202...
27/11/2025
What are the industry standards for Retail Media? Kathryn explains that certification is based on the IAB Europe Retail Media Measurement Standards and the IAB ...
27/11/2025
World champion boxer and Irish sporting icon Katie Taylor will be in studio this...
27/11/2025
Roblox, one of the world's most popular online gaming platforms for primary ...
27/11/2025
Black Friday is leveling up. Get ready to score one of the biggest deals of the season - 50% off the first three months of a new GeForce NOW Ultimate membership...
26/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Prime Video EP Mike Muriano Previews Massive Black Friday Slate Fe...
26/11/2025
A cinematic snow sculpture at the 1995 Sundance Film Festival. Photo by Randall Michelson...
26/11/2025
Book podcasts are booming. On Spotify, you'll find everything from celebrity book clubs to deep dives with bestselling authors. And in markets where audiobo...
26/11/2025
Mumbai, November 24, 2025: In a first-of-its-kind initiative, JioStar, in collab...
26/11/2025
LONDON Factual content producer ITN Productions has launched a new low-latency IP gallery for news bulletins....
26/11/2025
MIAMI TelevisaUnivision said it struck a new multiyear distribution agreement with YouTube TV that includes distribution of TelevisaUnivision's U.S. network...
26/11/2025
OpenDrives, Inc., a leader in software-defined data storage and data services, today announced the launch of the Atlas Corporate Creative Solution. This new Atl...
26/11/2025
Disguise, the industry-leading company powering the world's biggest live performances, is partnering with pioneering LED wall manufacturer DVS to give atten...
26/11/2025
HighField AI, the pioneer in agentic and multimodal automation for broadcast and media production, today announced the expansion of its global channel partner n...
26/11/2025
As high-stakes Premier League fixtures approach and additional premium content launches, with MONO positioning themselves to dominate Thailand's sports stre...
26/11/2025
Hosting a wide variety of events from high-intensity NHL games to complex live music concerts and major entertainment productions, Montreal's 21,000 capacit...
As my colleague Tim Pearson recently wrote in his blog series about Inside the Mind of a Pirate', high-traffic live events have always been a target for pirates. The opportunity to profit substantially by distributing illegal live or recorded streams to large audiences is often a risk worth taking. Major events such as the FIFA World Cup, the English Premier League, and the Ultimate Fighting Championship, to name a few, are all increasingly reaching a global audience. Combined with the acceleration of digital transformation, piracy is more than ever a significant risk in terms of financial impact and brand reputation for sports rights owners. Therefore, protecting valuable content investments is critical given sports play a key role in providing a sustainable streaming or broadcast model. 
