THE PREMIER LEAGUE ensured the news would not be buried.
“Five operators of illegal streaming network jailed for more than 30 years”, read the headline of a press release published on their website in May, which went on to detail the results of what they describe as “the world’s largest-ever prosecution of an illegal streaming network.”
Five men were sentenced at Chesterfield Justice Centre to a cumulative 30 years in prison for running an illegal streaming business that drew 50,000 subscribers and generated £7 million in five years.
The prominence the league gave to the story reflected their vigour in the fight against the piracy and illegal streaming of their matches. That fight against it is not just limited to the UK, as the Premier League and its main broadcast partner Sky are leading efforts to stamp out sports piracy in Ireland.
To that end, the Premier League have had extended to Ireland a new High Court order allowing them to block illegal streams of their mathes, while Sky Ireland are calling for Gardaí to be given extra resources to prosecute the vendors of illegal streaming devices.
Illegal streaming of Premier League games is generally monetised in two different forms. One is via the lower-quality streaming of matches on websites for free, around which advertising space is sold. The second is via the higher-quality IPTV service, in which viewers pay a fee to a provider to gain access to a host of sports and entertainment content on their TV, usually connected through a dodgy box or a firestick.
An EU report found that 170,000 people in Ireland (5% of the population) accessed an IPTV service in 2018, while recent research by French regulator Arcom estimated that estimate that there are 6 million consumers of pirated sports content in France, of which 2.5 million use a paid-for IPTV.
The aforementioned EU report found the average monthly cost of an IPTV service in Ireland was just under €6, whereas an Irish fan who wants to get legal access to every live Premier League game this season will pay €74 per month to three separate broadcasters: Sky Sports, TNT Sports (formerly BT), and Premier Sports, who show in Ireland the games that are broadcast on Amazon Prime in Britain. That doesn’t mean access to every game, however, as only 200 of the season’s 380 games will be broadcast live in the UK and Ireland this season.
This fragmentation is a factor in driving Irish fans to illegal streaming services, says Declan Lee, who is a PR and Marketing consultant who has worked extensively in sport.
“To put it in lay mans terms”, he tells The 42, “it would be like wanting to watch a full season of the Kardashians or Succession and having to pay for Disney, Netflix, Now TV and Prime just to see the whole thing, with different episodes on different platforms.”
This fragmentation is at least partly the result of a 2006 competition law ruling by the European Commission, which stated that the Premier League must be shown live in the UK by more than one broadcaster in a “no single buyer” directive. (It is part of the retained EU law that has continued to apply in the UK after Brexit.)
The no single buyer rule for the league isn’t enforced outside of the UK and Ireland as, for instance, NBC have the exclusive broadcast rights for the United States and Optus Sports are the league’s only broadcasters in Australia. In fact, Ireland are one of only five EU countries in which the Premier League is shown by more than one broadcaster and the only one in which it is split across three.
The consumer benefits of this have been highly dubious.
“Ireland seems to be on the upper end of pricing when it comes to international access to the Premier League games”, explains Lee. “In the US the rights are held by NBC and this is linked into some of their premier streaming channels such as Peacock. So while you are getting your sport, you are also getting premium drama, movies etc. Similar to the offering that Sky have but different in the way they structure their pricing. In the US you can expect to pay $60 dollars a year, or around $6-$8 dollars a month.
“If you want an ad-free experience you will fork out another $6 a month. Still very reasonable. In Australia Optus Sport is what you will have to subscribe to and this will cost you $30 a month or $200 a year. Again much lower than what is required in Ireland where you have to pay much more across multiple subscriptions to get all the ‘available’ games.”
The availability of games is another issue for fans. Whereas NBC in the US show every single game in the Premier League – making it possible to see every single game that, say, Liverpool or Manchester United play – there are fewer games shown in Ireland and the UK, meaning there is no legal option to watch every game played by one’s favourite club.
“In that, there is something broken”, says Lee. “You have a market who want to pay for content, but they cannot access it. Hence people are driven to streams. It’s not the broadcaster’s fault, it’s the structure of what they are allowed to buy from the Premier League.”
The Premier League blocked 600,000 illegal streams of their matches last season, and recently won a beefed-up High Court order to allow them continue to do so. They have also extended that order to be enforceable in Ireland, so they are able to direct Internet Service Providers to shut down illegal streams between specific times.
These “dynamic injunctions” are a form of whack-a-mole but are proving to be a useful tool. Legislation was passed in France in 2021 to allow for the blocking of illegal streaming sites, and industry body APPS reported last year that total sports piracy usage declined by 50% and that 10-15% of pirate users took up legitimate subscriptions. When streams of a 2022 Champions League game involving Paris Saint-Germain were shut down, rights holder Canal+ generated a record number of single-night subscription sales.
Sky Ireland, meanwhile, are calling for Gardaí to be given more resources to act against the largest-scale vendors of IPTV devices. Industry sources estimate the biggest sellers of these devices have a monthly turnover of six figures, the vast majority of which is profit.
At a recent appearance at the Oireachtas Sport Committee’s hearing on the future of sports broadcasting, Sky Ireland’s Regulatory and Corporate Affairs Mark Carpenter called for Gardaí to be given more resources to act against the largest-scale vendors of IPTV devices. Carpenter also defended Sky’s pricing at the Committee.
“We are constantly conscious of pricing and making it as competitive as possible because we want to attract as many customers as possible”, he said. “Ultimately, when you are acquiring the level of rights we acquire and with the level of production we have across 11 channels, that requires significant investment but if you look at the amount of live sport we show and how much viewers engage with that sport and look at it on a per-hour basis, we think we provide good value.”
In a recent, pre-budget submission by the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC), Sky were part of a sub-group calling for the establishment of “a dedicated antidigital piracy unit within the IP crime unit of An Garda Síochána” that is “resourced with at least two detectives to target resellers of pirated content, which is a real threat to the screen industry in Ireland.”
Elsewhere, research group Enders have called on payment systems like Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal to work with rights holders to tackle piracy.
There are hints of forthcoming change in how the Premier League will be packaged and broadcast to customers in the UK and Ireland, with the next rights auction slated for later this year.
The Telegraph report that the next rights deal will include an additional 60 live matches, while the Mail say this will include live broadcast of every single match held on a Sunday.
“Specifically for sport I can see it becoming more fan focused in the future but it may get worse before it gets better”, says Lee. “With more players entering the market – Apple, YouTube – the Premier League may divide the games even further. We have seen Apple buy up the MLS and one of the big streamers will make a move for the Premier League sooner or later. While it may be some time away yet, we will reach a stage where you just pay for your team’s games. This may be something like the European Super League would offer teams to entice them to sign up – ownership of their own broadcasting rights. This is already happening in US sports to some extent.”
