Background Report on
Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
Executive Summary
Introduction and background

This background report on the digital piracy of sporting events has been prepared in response to the
OECD Phase II Study on Digital Piracy.

The intention of this report is to demonstrate the major issues presented to sports organisations by the
piracy of their events through the internet. The report illustrates the range of sports affected, the
amount of pirated content available, identifies the main methods through which piracy occurs, highlights
trends, and discusses some ways in which sports rights owners currently attempt to address the problem
of digital piracy.

Twenty-seven sporting organisations participated in the report, comprising twelve different sports from
seven different countries. Seven sports represent international leagues or organisations. All participants
are listed in Appendix A.

The report has been compiled jointly by Envisional and NetResult, UK companies providing intelligence,
monitoring, consultancy, and enforcement services to rights holders in this area.
Major findings
Sports Piracy

The sale of broadcast rights represents a major source of revenue to the sports rights owners who
participated in this report. This revenue is re-invested and re-distributed throughout those organisations,
enabling them to thrive and continue, from grassroots and community level to professional league.

Digital piracy is therefore one of the most important threats facing sports rights owners today. The
ability to distribute, internet-wide, live unauthorised streams of sports events makes it possible for
viewers around the world to access content quickly and easily without any compensation to the sports
whose rights are infringed. This poses a significant adverse threat to sports organisations, their broadcast
licensees and others linked in the global business sector surrounding live sports.

The range of sports available for viewers to consume through pirated means on the internet is enormous.
Sporting organisations receive no revenue for any pirated re-broadcast of their events while those
providing the pirated stream often profit financially, commonly from advertising embedded in a web site
or software client.

The most popular methods of sports broadcast piracy on the internet are those which provide immediate
and live access to streams of matches, games, or events as they happen. For most users, the intention is
to evade restrictions and fees placed on the transmission and reception of the event in the user's own
country or broadcast area, or to be able to view events which are not shown in that broadcast area at all.

Audiences for some unauthorised live streams of sporting events are already over one million viewers.
The most popular events have more than fifty separate unauthorised streams offering a free and live retransmission.

All sporting organisations affected by the problem of internet piracy are convinced that the phenomenon
presents an extraordinarily difficult challenge to which they are ill-equipped to respond given the
current legal and technical means at their disposal.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
Streaming Technologies

Live streaming of sporting events is based on two different types of technology: unicast, which streams
direct from a server to a viewer, and peer to peer (P2P), which places the viewer in a swarm of others,
each of whom are sharing parts of the stream with others in the swarm.

Sites offering unicast streams often require viewers to pay a subscription for access as servers and
bandwidth can be expensive to lease. Sites utilising P2P streams tend to be free to use and have become
more popular than unicast-based sites.

P2P-based streams use technology provided by a small number of services which tend to be developed
and based in China. These include the two main services used for the re-transmission of sporting content,
SopCast and TVAnts.

The hardware required to broadcast a live stream on a P2P service can be found on many home
computers or purchased cheaply in any computer store. All that is needed is a €50 TV tuner card and
suitable software, which is now widely available. Some of the P2P services – such as SopCast and TVAnts
– offer free broadcast software to users, allowing anyone to generate and broadcast a stream to
thousands of others at no cost.

Accessing a live stream of a sporting event requires little technical knowledge. The process is simple and
aided by large portal sites which collate and index links for a wide range of sports and also provide guides
to new users. Such sites are easy to find and navigate.
Attempts to deal with sports piracy

All participants in this report strongly believe there are inadequate tools available to properly address
the piracy of their content on the internet.

At present, many organisations expend significant time and resources in monitoring and attempting to
control sites which infringe on their rights by offering, linking to, or embedding live streams of their
events. Sporting organisations sometimes achieve limited success with these programs. In any event,
these efforts are in the main reactive, short-lived and place the entire onus for rights protection on the
sporting organisation.

For example, after a lengthy rights enforcement procedure by MLB Advanced Media (the internet and
interactive media company of Major League Baseball), one of the main P2P-based streaming services
(SopCast) banned all streams for that league. However, users re-broadcasting that league and the viewers
of those streams simply shifted to different P2P services (e.g., TVAnts). Unauthorised transmissions of
MLB content have increased by 25% from the 2007 season to the 2008 season.

Where possible, legal action against individual sites and facilitators has been taken by some sports
organisations but the process is time-consuming, expensive and, in some cases, ultimately ineffective.
Sites closed in one country can change to new hosts in new countries in under a day.

For example, an attempt by Cricket Australia to close a site re-broadcasting a range of live sporting events
including cricket has been frustrated by the ability of the site to continually switch hosting providers
(often to countries with more permissive copyright laws) and by those running it to protect their identities
and locations well enough to evade all but the most forthright efforts by broadcasts, the authorities, and
the judiciary. The site remains online despite judicial orders prohibiting its further operation.

There are some technical methods which may possibly provide help to manage some aspects of sporting
piracy but do not and cannot provide a full answer.

The NBA have entered into agreements with two of the largest P2P streaming services in China to offer
legitimate streams of live NBA games. Although these partnerships may have resulted in a decrease in the
number of average viewers for unauthorized streams, this arrangement has by no means eliminated or
solved the issue of NBA content piracy in China, and has not addressed the piracy of their games
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
elsewhere. Further, current rights agreements mean that it may not even be possible for other sports to
explore similar partnerships. As a result this business model still remains unproven.
Case Study: Cricket

Over nine cricket events between 2005 and April 2008, 941 individual sites were found to provide
unauthorised streams, embed the video from those streams, or provide a link to the streams.

The number of P2P-based streams for unauthorised re-transmissions of cricket events has increased at
the expense of streams requiring payment for access. Free hosting sites such as Blogspot are also
increasingly in use for embedded streams for cricket.

SopCast is responsible for 60% of P2P-based live cricket streams.

The market for broadcast rights for cricket in the United States has been severely affected by the wide
availability of unauthorised live streams. One of the two primary legitimate providers of cricket broadcasts
in the country is now disinclined to bid for rights, leaving a monopolistic and uncompetitive market which
will have an effect on the revenues available worldwide to cricket development.
Case Study: Football

Across four popular European football leagues, an average of 91 infringing sites were found for each
league. 177 individual sites were located which provided unauthorised streams of Premier League
matches.

The majority of infringing sites (over 95% of sites for three of the leagues) were connected to P2P-based
streaming infringements. 37% of Premier League infringements from the 2007-08 season were from
unicast-based re-transmissions.

Monitoring of a Premier League game from April 2008 indicated an audience of 238,000 viewers. Of a
sample of these viewers, 49% were located in China with a further 13% in the UK.

During the 2007-2008 season, 85 sites with infringements were located for the Bundesliga with the vast
majority P2P-based infringements.

49 sites were located with infringements for La Liga over a single weekend in April 2008. Over the same
weekend, 53 sites were located with infringements for Serie A. The audience for a Serie A game during
that weekend measured 169,000 viewers with 45% of a sample of viewers located in China and 17% in
Italy.

Monitoring post-event downloads of two Champions League matches on the bittorrent peer to peer
network showed close to 13,000 individual downloads for the most popular match. One-third of
downloaders were in either France, the United States, or the United Kingdom.
Case Study: Basketball

NBA content is extremely popular in China. Almost 80% of viewers of unauthorised streams of NBA games
are located in China.

Over the last two seasons, 172 sites providing unauthorised streams of NBA games have been located
online, with 74% related to P2P streaming. The SopCast service is responsible for over 60% of streams.

Over one million viewers were recorded on an unauthorised SopCast stream of an NBA game in December
2007.

The NBA has entered into partnerships with PPLive and PPStream to provide legitimate streams of NBA
games in China. Although monitoring shows that the average number of viewers for unauthorised NBA
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
streams has declined since these partnerships were established, the number of NBA games being
streamed without authorisation has remained the same. Indeed, a large number of illegitimate streaming
sites still exist (even in China) and the NBA, together with other sports organisations, still faces major
problems from digital piracy in the country.
Other Sports

All other sporting organisations participating in this report have experienced live streaming piracy at one
level or another.

MLB games are frequently pirated online. MLB documented more than 3,200 unauthorised live
broadcasts in 2007. During the 2008 season, incidents have increased by more than 25%.

After vigorous rights enforcement, the SopCast service banned streams of MLB games. However, the
centre of unauthorised P2P streams has now shifted to the TVAnts service.

Monitoring of three grand slam tennis tournaments located 129 sites over seven grand slam events since
the start of 2006. However, the situation appears to be becoming worse for tennis: 59 sites were located
for the last grand slam event monitored compared to just 70 such sites for all six tournaments before this.

Australian Rules Football has had a particular problem with downloads of their games on bittorrent and
have had some success closing a small number of Australian sites. Other bittorrent sites remain online and
offer a large number of AFL games.

Across three major rugby events during 2007 and 2008, 70 sites were located which concerned
unauthorised live streaming with 75% P2P-based.

For the 2007 Formula One season, 79 infringing sites were located. Of four monitored raced, an audience
of over 150,000 was recorded for the most popular.

Comprehensive coverage of major athletics events can be found on live streaming services.

Golf tournaments are regularly streamed live through unauthorised means on the internet.

Almost all televised games from the National Football League can be located on live streaming services.
Streams are popular with the large pockets of NFL fans outside the United States but also with US viewers
who can use such streams get around blackout restrictions in their local markets.

Horseracing can also be found through live streaming services, often provided by legitimate betting
services. There are concerns that the availability of unauthorised live streams increases unlawful betting
activity.
July 2008
Envisional | NetResult
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
Contents
1
INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................................... 9
1.1
SPORTING PIRACY ON THE INTERNET
1.2
MAIN PIRACY METHODS
11
1.3
REPORT STRUCTURE
14
2
9
ATTEMPTS TO ADDRESS SPORTING PIRACY ONLINE................................................................................ 15
2.1
INTRODUCTION
15
2.2
TAKEDOWN NOTIFICATION PROGRAMS
15
2.3
LEGAL ACTION AGAINST FACILITATORS AND SITES
16
2.4
STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS
18
2.5
GOVERNMENTAL REGULATION
18
3
LIVE STREAMING PIRACY......................................................................................................................... 20
3.1
INTRODUCTION
3.1.1
How does a stream begin? ................................................................................................................................................................ 20
3.2
UNICAST STREAMING
21
3.3
P2P-BASED LIVE STREAMING
21
3.3.1
Accessing live streaming content ...................................................................................................................................................... 22
3.3.2
Technology Outline ........................................................................................................................................................................... 24
3.4
MAIN P2P STREAMING SERVICES
3.4.1
SopCast ............................................................................................................................................................................................. 25
3.4.2
TVAnts ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 26
4
20
25
CASE STUDY: CRICKET ............................................................................................................................. 28
4.1
INTRODUCTION
28
4.2
WIDESPREAD LIVE STREAMS
28
5
CASE STUDY: FOOTBALL .......................................................................................................................... 31
5.1
INTRODUCTION
31
5.2
OVERALL COMPARISON
31
5.3
EXAMPLE: PREMIER LEAGUE
32
5.4
EXAMPLE: BUNDESLIGA
33
5.5
EXAMPLE: LA LIGA
34
5.6
EXAMPLE: SERIE A
34
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5.7
OTHER LEAGUES AND TOURNAMENTS
34
5.8
POPULARITY ON FILE SHARING NETWORKS
35
6
CASE STUDY: BASKETBALL ....................................................................................................................... 36
6.1
INTRODUCTION
36
6.2
LIVE STREAMING DATA
36
6.3
AUDIENCE SIZE AND COMPOSITION
37
6.4
PARTNERSHIP STRATEGIES
37
7
OTHER PARTICIPATING SPORTS .............................................................................................................. 39
7.1
INTRODUCTION
39
7.2
BASEBALL
39
7.3
TENNIS
40
7.4
AUSTRALIAN RULES FOOTBALL
40
7.5
RUGBY
41
7.6
MOTORSPORTS
42
7.7
ATHLETICS
43
7.8
GOLF
43
7.9
AMERICAN FOOTBALL
43
7.10 HORSERACING
8
43
APPENDIX A: LIST OF SPORTING ORGANISATIONS INVOLVED IN REPORT ............................................... 45
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
1 Introduction
1.1
Sporting piracy on the internet
When the words ‘internet’ and ‘piracy’ are used together, it is the unauthorised downloading of major film,
television, music, and gaming content that usually comes to mind. Using dedicated file sharing networks,
millions of users can find a near-complete library of popular movies, TV shows, albums, and computer and
console games, all free to download.
In contrast, sport is rarely considered to suffer a similar problem – yet over the last few years, new and
effective technologies have given internet users the world over the ability to watch live sporting events as they
happen. Internet streaming technology allows users to watch sporting events regardless of where they or the
event may be located and whether or not an official broadcast is available in their country. This poses a major
issue for the leagues and organisations who own and control sports as the sale of broadcast rights represents a
major source of revenue, enabling the sports to thrive and continue, from grassroots level to professional
league.
The revenue gained from the exploitation of broadcast and other media rights is re-invested and re-distributed
throughout the sporting organisations that are participating in this report. Income is provided to a range of
initiatives: youth development, training, improving and refurbishing facilities, providing equipment, and
increasing participation in sports in the wider community. Indeed, sport is almost unique in the amount of
reinvestment in the wider sports which exist outside the specific organisation to which the broadcast rights
accrue – so for instance, the Premier League helps fund lower leagues and community football within the
English game; similarly, Cricket Australia’s ‘Getting Involved’ program helps develop community and schools
cricket, coaches, and umpires. The sale of television rights represents 80% of the revenue of the English and
Welsh Cricket Board (ECB), aiding a £30m development program in facilities and club cricket amidst continued
initiatives to increase participation at grassroots level.
As an example, the cricket broadcast market in the United States – which is primarily based on the broadband
platform for distribution – has recently shown an inclination to move away from cricket solely due to the
availability and scale of unauthorised streams of matches on the internet. One of the two main broadcasters
of the sport in the US now appears disinclined to bid for cricket rights. The effect of a single buyer on the
value likely to be paid for cricket rights is obvious and could have a severe effect on grassroots cricket and
participation levels.
Rights income also represents increasingly important economic returns. A 2006 European Commission White
Paper 1indicated that sport was responsible for 3.7% of GDP in the European Union while employing 5.4% of
1
European Commission White Paper on Sport (COM(2007) 391).
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
the labour force. The Sports Rights Owners Coalition (SROC) stated in a submission to the Euorpean
Commission’s Content Online Consultation:
Investment in sport at every level – investing in talent development and in people and facilities at the grassroots, as
well as at the elite levels – is dependent on achieving the proper returns due to the creators of sporting content. This
is important not only to the sports themselves, but also to the wider economy, with sport making an increasing
contribution to European GDP.
The range of sports available for viewers to consume through pirated means on the internet is extensive:
ranging from football to floorball and basketball to boxing. Sports affected by internet piracy include those
with a strong global audience such as football to those watched across the world but often not with the same
kind of fervour as football (such as tennis) to those with intense regional followings (cricket) and to others
predominantly centred on a particular country (such Australian Rules Football and American Football). In
addition to live streaming piracy, post-event pirated downloads are also growing, both of full games and
highlights.
The rise of internet-based methods for pirating sporting content (particularly of live broadcasts) and the
flourishing number of those offering, consuming, and distributing unauthorised streams have convinced the
sporting organisations who participated in this report that the phenomenon of internet piracy presents an
extraordinarily difficult challenge to which they are ill-equipped to respond given the current legal and
technical means at their disposal. For instance, some known infringers continue to operate from profit-making
sites offering streams for a range of sports even following successful legal action and judicial orders prohibiting
further operation.
The intention of this report is to describe the major issues sports organisations confront in the piracy of their
events through the internet: including the range of games and events available, the process through which
viewers access pirated content, notable trends, and ways in which rights holders currently attempt to protect
their rights online. The report has been prepared on behalf of twenty-seven sporting leagues or organisations
that represent twelve different sports from seven different countries. Twenty of the organisations are countrybased while seven represent international organisations and leagues. The full list of participants is available in
Appendix A.
The report has been compiled by the piracy intelligence department at Envisional, an internet consultancy
with extensive experience in analysing the landscape of piracy for rights holders, and by NetResult, a
monitoring and enforcement company who work with sporting rights holders to detect and take down
unauthorised broadcasts of live sports events. NetResult provided all of the data related to live streaming
which is found within the report.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
1.2
Main piracy methods
Sports piracy on the internet takes place through a variety of different methods. The nature of the
consumption of sports broadcasts means that methods which allow live access to an event are by far the most
popular amongst viewers. While demand for post-event pirated copies or highlights exists, the immediacy of
access offered by live internet-based streaming to events is one of the primary reasons behind the popularity
of such broadcasting.
It is important to emphasise the unique features of the piracy of sporting broadcasts as opposed to other
forms of video-based piracy such as films or other television programs. For sports piracy, the immediacy of
access to sporting broadcasts overrides the need for high quality: users simply want the ability to watch the
event as it happens. The principle aim of viewers accessing pirated transmissions is to consume the event in
the same way as if the scheduled television broadcast was accessible to them. For most users, the intention is
to bypass any restrictions placed on the transmission and reception of the event in the user's own country or
broadcast area, or to be able to view events which are not shown in that broadcast area at all. The key value is
therefore to view – for free – sporting events which would otherwise be inaccessible, either because they
require payment in that user's country or because the event is not immediately available live to that user at
all. Others yet may seek the freedom to watch the event on their computer rather than the television (the
advantage of portability).
Sport has a unique appeal in that it can often be enjoyed by viewers regardless of the region in which it is
played or the language in which the commentary is provided. While viewers prefer commentary in their own
language, even foreign-language commentary is acceptable for content that is highly sought-after but difficult
to obtain.
There are three main ways in which pirated versions of sports are consumed through the internet:
Live streams re-broadcast via peer to peer television services or streamed directly from a web server
Recorded versions of events uploaded to file sharing networks such as bittorrent or eDonkey.
Highlights placed on UGC sites like YouTube or uploaded to file sharing networks.
The main focus on this report is on the full re-transmission of broadcasted events, either live or post-event,
rather than UGC sites.
Live streaming
As outlined above, live streaming of sports events is the most important type of sporting internet piracy – both
to the fan, who is able to experience the game or event live, and to the rights owner whose property is
infringed and whose revenue is damaged by the unauthorised re-transmission of the event.
Viewers locate unauthorised streams by general internet searching or by word-of-mouth or online guides.
Many viewers participate in online communities dedicated to their chosen sport or to streaming in general and
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
these sites provide easy-to-follow tutorials on where to locate and how to access live
streams. Other sites advertise on search engines such as Google and Yahoo to attract
curious viewers searching for live sports in the hopes of converting them into
members.
Large portals which collate and provide one-click access to live
streams for a variety of sports are becoming more and more
popular. Sites like MyP2P.eu and RojaDirecta provide an extensive
number of live streams for broadcasts related to over forty
different sports with new content posted every day. A user
entering “free live sports” into Google is presented with MyP2P as
the first result (see Section 3.3).
These systems work in conjunction with two main types of
technology used to power live streaming: unicast, where a viewer makes a direct connection to a streaming
server to receive the video stream, and peer to peer (P2P) streaming, where a viewer uses a special software
client or browser plugin to connect to a swarm of others viewing the game or event. The way in which these
technologies function is discussed further in Section 3. Most P2P streaming services are developed – and
heavily used – in China, as viewing figures indicate.
The numbers of those involved in viewing such content can be significant. A single stream of an NBA game in
December 2007 was viewed by over one million people with around three-quarters of the viewers believed to
be located in China. NetResult have monitored over 700,000 viewers of one cricket match, and the two most
popular streams for a Premier League football match in April 2008 were viewed by an estimated total of
238,000 with 49% of those viewers in China (based on a sample).
As well as Unicast and types of streaming, there is also an
increasing use for sports piracy of new services which are
designed to enable users to broadcast personal streams through
the internet. Sites such as Ustream and Justin.tv – which operate
rather like a live YouTube – are used by fans of particular teams
or sports to re-broadcast received channels. These can then be
easily located and streamed direct by viewers (Justin.tv has a
dedicated ‘Sports’ category on its homepage). There is no peer
to peer element in these services at all – the transmission is most
similar to Unicast but most services make use of content delivery networks which cache content at various
points on the internet.
The services and sites involved in the live streaming of sporting content can earn revenue in numerous ways.
Most commonly, advertising is embedded on web sites or shown before a live stream begins. Widely used
internet advertising programs such as Google AdSense or AdBrite are common providers of adverts: such
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
programs permit any site to join as an advertising publisher without any pro-active investigation or ongoing
monitoring of participants. As such, the advertising programs provide a revenue stream which helps support
the live streaming services and also profit from placed adverts themselves. It is likely that without the
presence of such easy-to-use advertising programs, many of the sites and services which facilitate live
streaming could not continue to exist, given the costs of the technical means required to stay live.
Other streaming services or portal sites request donations or charge subscription fees. For instance, MyP2P
request donations from users while LiveSportOn.TV charge a flat monthly rate for access to streams.
File sharing networks
The continued spread and rise of file sharing networks has been one of the defining aspects of the twenty-first
century internet. A range of surveys2 find that between 50% and 80% of global bandwidth is consumed by peer
to peer file sharing networks such as bittorrent and eDonkey. Envisional estimates that between fifteen and
twenty millions users are connected to a peer to peer network at any given time, sharing millions of copies of
copyrighted files. The most popular content – such as newly released movies and prime-time television
episodes – is downloaded well over one million times each.
On the video (and sporting) side, these traditional
file sharing networks share and trade post-event
copies of broadcast or theatre content: typically,
television episodes are recorded as they are aired
and films are taped from a cinema showing or DVD
copy and then uploaded. As such, the video
available online is not live, meaning that sporting
events lose much of their attraction and reinforcing
the advantages of the live streaming services
discussed above. This means that the most indemand sporting content is not amongst the most in-demand content on file sharing networks overall.
However, the quality tends to be much higher than is available from live streaming with events in a high
enough resolution to watch full-screen on a monitor or television.
Envisional tracked downloads of all four 2007-08 UEFA Champions League semi-finals and three end-of-season
Premier League matches on the bittorrent network. The most popular match was downloaded a total of
13,200 times worldwide in a two-week period following first appearance.
2
E.g., http://www.ipoque.com/news_&_events/internet_studies/internet_study_2007.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
UGC sites
This report will not focus on sporting piracy which is consumed through UGC sites, though it is an obvious area
of concern. The Premier League initiated a class-action lawsuit against Google in May 2007 on the grounds
that the YouTube site encouraged and profited from clips of matches uploaded to the site by users. The
lawsuit has since been joined by the Rugby Football League, the Scottish Premier League, author Daniel Quinn,
the French Ligue de Football Professionnel, Federation Française de Tennis, the National Music Publishers'
Association, and Cherry Lane Music Publishing amongst others.
1.3
Report structure
Section 2 of this report discusses ways in which sports rights owners currently attempt to address the digital
piracy of their events and examines possible methods which might be used to aid in these attempts. All
sporting organisations who have participated in this report believe that there are currently inadequate tools
for rights protection online.
Section 3 outlines the two main live streaming technologies used to offer live sports through the internet
(Unicast and P2P streaming). Sections 4, 5, and 6 discuss the digital piracy situation as it affects three of the
sports experiencing a major problem in this area: cricket, football, and basketball. Section 7 then examines the
situation as it affects the other participants in the report.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
2 Attempts to address sporting piracy online
2.1
Introduction
There are a variety of strategies which sporting organisations have attempted to pursue to limit the amount of
piracy which takes place through the internet, particularly on live streaming services. These efforts include
attempts to take down infringing streams as they are broadcast to the legal pursuit of sites which
systematically facilitate piracy on a wide scale (either for an individual sport or across a range of sports).
However, all sports rights owners who contributed to this report strongly believe that the range of tools
available to protect their rights on the internet are and will remain inadequate to properly address the
unauthorised streaming of their content.
There are three main ways in which sporting leagues currently or could take direct or indirect action to help
prevent the live piracy of their own events through unauthorised re-transmission:
Individual stream or link takedowns
Legal action against sites / services / portals / facilitators
Encourage government regulation on sites / services / ISPs
Also, one major sport has established partnerships with two streaming providers in China to provide legitimate
streams to viewers in the country. This is discussed below but while it appears to have helped reduce the
audience for unauthorised streams in the country, it should not be seen as an answer to the issue of piracy.
Evidence from a number of participants in this report demonstrates substantial costs expended in combating
internet piracy. Over the last year, four sporting organisations and a broadcast rights owner have spent over
€1.3m (non-exhaustive) in attempts to challenge those providing unauthorised streams of their content or
facilitating access to those streams, with two of those organisations reporting significant increases in the last
six months.
2.2
Takedown notification programs
One of the principal means by which current rights owners attempt to combat the proliferation of live streams
or other forms of pirated sports content on the internet is through monitoring programmes that locate, verify,
and request the removal of streams, embedded video, or links to unauthorised content. For instance,
NetResult patrol and monitor for infringing content, sending out pre-arranged cease-and-desist letters to sites
and hosting companies on which streams, videos, or links are located. The company also contacts well-known
locations of pirated live streams with lists of upcoming matches or events, requesting that relevant content be
blocked or removed should it appear.
However, the onus for such activity is placed entirely on the rights holder: protecting their content in this
manner necessitates resource-intensive efforts to locate streams, record evidence, and send a notification to
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
the site, service, or host (or all three) requesting the removal of the offending content. It should be
emphasised that take down notification programs require voluntary compliance by the pirate services. Since
the value proposition is in the pirated content, compliance is highly dependent on the intellectual property
arbitrage between the rules and enforcement regimes of relevant countries.
With popular cricket and football matches featured on more than fifty individual streams – and with stream
providers unable to be contacted until the event has begun – the process also requires a significant amount of
work to be compressed into a small windows of opportunity. If those who receive notifications do not comply
at all or in a timely fashion (and for a football or basketball game, for instance, that means a couple of hours)
then viewers of the unauthorised live stream will be able to consume the entire event without interruption.
Further, compliance is often hampered by the lack of legal obligation in most countries for the site providing
the stream or link to remove the unauthorised content or the link to that content, though many linking sites
comply out of fear of legal action.
Reactive stream takedown takes up time, resource, and significant expense, focused on a small window of
opportunity and based on the compliance of sites and services who gain much popularity from distributing the
streams as widely as possible. It is far from an ideal way to protect content. Yet at present, the takedown
process is currently the most effective way and in some countries, the only way for rights holders to try and
ensure that their live events are not consumed by an illegitimate audience.
There are improvements which can be made to the process: for instance, those services such as SopCast
(originating in China) which facilitate a large amount of the sporting content found online could provide a way
for recognised rights holders to automatically take down streams which feature their own events. This would
significantly improve the speed with which streams could be removed and lower the cost involved with the
takedown process. It would also help alter the balance of power in the current situation which now lies
squarely with those providing and viewing the streams. However, this still places the responsibility and burden
on the sporting league for the location and removal of the unauthorised streams.
After substantial direct and indirect pressure, MLB Advanced Media managed to persuade the SopCast P2P
streaming service to place a ban on the live streaming of Major League Baseball games (see Section 7 for
further detail). The reaction of SopCast also demonstrates that these services do retain a significant level of
control over the content which they distribute. Because the SopCast developers – and those of other
streaming services – own and manage a number of central points within the upload and distribution process,
they are able to impose control at any of these points and can remove channels and streams, ban users, and
proactively and reactively patrol their network for infringing content.
2.3
Legal action against facilitators and sites
Sporting leagues affected by internet-based piracy have taken a range of legal action against sites and services
which facilitate piracy of their events. Yet as this summary of some of the legal action taken by rights holders
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
will demonstrate, legal action even in those jurisdictions in which it is a viable alternative is expensive, timeconsuming, necessarily reactive and, ultimately, not always effective. In the lightning-fast internet-era, the
pursuit of legal cases which can take many months – if not longer – to reach judgment face enormous hurdles.
The ability of the internet to offer global connectivity and access to sites hosted in any country, the speed with
which sites can be reopened or recreated (or with which a new site can be created and opened), and the ease
with which ownership details can be effectively hidden from view illustrates some of the difficulties faced by
sporting organisations forced to take country-based actions against streaming sites.
The Premier League has been very active in this area, with three major actions targeting five sites with UK
owners which were commercially exploiting live streaming of Premier League games and other football
matches3. Orders were served on the owners where they could be located. Three of the five sites are now
closed. All three cases face issues which demonstrate some of the problems with pursuing country-specific
legal actions in the internet era. In one case, the site footballon.net was closed and the owners ordered to
disclose various pieces of information about the site and its subscribers. Yet since the order was served, a new
site at footballon.info has opened, deliberately replicating the original site. In the second and third cases, the
identified owner of each site left the country before the Premier League could serve the judgment orders
requiring closure. One of these sites, premiershiplive.net, continues to operate but likely with a different
owner who may reside in the Ukraine (where the site is now physically hosted). The Premier League has also
recently commenced an action against an Israeli-registered site which offers users access to Premier League
matches through the SopCast and TVU P2P services.
The Australian Football League have managed to close one bittorrent portal offering a wide range of AFL
content and ensure that another no longer features AFL games of any kind after informing the sites of their
legal position and promising legal action if they did not comply.
UEFA was successful in closing a subscription-based streaming site run by three individuals in the UK in 2006.
The organisation also regularly issues proactive and reactive warning letters to sites which are known to offer
links or embed streams. With all EU broadcasters of UEFA matches – including the Champions League and Euro
2008 – obliged to simultaneously offer the live stream to users in their own country, it is of fundamental
importance for unauthorised and illegitimate streams to be rendered inaccessible as soon as possible.
Cricket Australia took action against a particularly sophisticated site offering unauthorised transmissions. The
sportontv.com site (which included cricketon.tv) was forced to close after a decision in the Scottish courts but
this victory is deemed “largely hollow” by Cricket Australia: the site remains open after regularly shifting
hosting providers online, often appearing in jurisdictions with more permissive copyright laws. The owners of
the site are sophisticated enough to avoid detection without considerable investigatory and legal efforts from
broadcasters, the judiciary and police.
3
The sites pursued were footballon.net, freepremierleague.com, premiershiplive.net, freelivefootball.co.uk and premsat.co.uk.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
2.4
Strategic Partnerships
The wide availability of and audience for live sporting content through unauthorised streaming services shows
that this is an area where there is an obvious consumer demand. Increasingly, content owners in various
industries are exploring how best to deliver legitimate content through the internet: movie studios and
television networks offer films and television episodes to own or rent through services such as iTunes; ‘catchup’ offerings such as the BBC’s iPlayer and the Hulu initiative in the United States enable viewers to watch
recently aired content for a period after it airs; other television networks are experimenting with using
networks like bittorrent to widely distribute content to users.
Yet as already highlighted, the high demand for sporting content as it airs makes post-event sales or ‘catch-up’
transmission of far less importance than offering games or matches as they occur. As yet, only a small number
of sporting organisations have attempted to offer events live through streaming services. For instance, MLB
Advanced Media has offered a subscription-based online service through which almost all MLB games are
available live to internet end-users on a worldwide basis. The National Basketball Association has pursued a
successful venture with two non-sports organisation streaming company: faced with a significant problem of
unauthorised streams – driven by a substantial desire for access to NBA games in China – the NBA established
partnerships with two of the largest live streaming systems in the country. The NBA now has control over the
transmission of its games through these partner networks, in addition to obtaining revenue from the
distribution of its content and ensuring that the public in China can access NBA content through an additional
sanctioned and legitimate source. Although the average number of viewers for unauthorized NBA streams has
declined since these partnerships were established, the number of NBA games being streamed without
authorisation has remained the same.
Establishing such agreements takes time and inclination and often a need to work within long-standing
licensing agreements (as well as a willingness to deal with those who may have previously profited from the
unauthorised distribution of a sport’s content). Sports organizations may be forced into considering such
partnerships as a result of the inadequacy of effective legal and technological measures to stop unauthorised
streaming and, for many sports, current rights agreements mean that it is simply not possible even to enter
into negotiations for such arrangements. As a result, this business model still remains unproven.
2.5
Governmental regulation
The lobbying and educational process can be time-consuming and expensive but ultimately one of the best
ways to ensure that those affected by piracy can gain the protection which they need. The United States
government identified the live sports telecast piracy problem in its 2008 Special 301 Report, stating that
“unauthorized retransmission of live sports telecasts over the Internet is reportedly becoming an increasing
problem internationally, particularly in China....The United States is continuing to work with other
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
governments, in consultation with U.S. copyright industries and other affected sectors, to develop strategies
to address [[this] global problem].”
While fully international and internet-wide regulation is almost impossible to imagine and implement, controls
which may impose restrictions on the service which individual country-based ISPs can offer or the steps which
they must take to ensure that copyrights are better protected have become more widely discussed over the
last two years. For instance, the 2006 Gowers Report in the UK required ISPs to produce an acceptable code of
‘Best Common Practice’ for complaints about copyright infringements committed by subscribers while
proposals for graduated response4 have been raised by governments in France, Japan, and Canada.
Government regulation also requires that regulatory organisations are fully aware of the level of harm
experienced by sporting leagues from such piracy, as well as the prospects for a future internet in which access
to such streams becomes easier and faster. With sport contributing significant amounts to local economies
and the range of reinvestment and redistribution initiatives undertaken by sporting organisations, it must be
hoped that internet-based sports piracy would become widely recognised as a major issue worthy of
exploration and attention. At every level, it is vital to recognise – as a recent EPFL Conference on protecting
intellectual property rights within sports stated – that “a clear IP framework for sport, through appropriate
legislative action, is absolutely indispensable both at national and international levels”.
4
A proposal which would see individual ISP subscribers first warned and eventually banned for an ISP if they continually infringe identified
copyrighted content.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
3 Live streaming piracy
3.1
Introduction
There are two main types of streaming used in the broadcast of pirated sporting events through the internet:
Unicast services send a video stream direct from the server to a viewer. The stream is received by the
viewer in order. Generally, no special software other than a typical media player (such as Windows Media
Player, RealPlayer, or VLC) is required to view the stream. The process is bandwidth-intensive. As the
name suggests, the broadcast is one-to-one, server to viewer. If two viewers are connected to the unicast
server, two versions of the stream must be broadcast; if ten viewers are connected, ten versions; and so
on. For this reason, dedicated streaming servers tend to be relatively costly to run and maintain. They are
often associated with sites that require subscriptions from potential viewers.
Peer to peer based streaming services work in a different way. The initial broadcast is made by a server
but is sent only to one or two viewers. The server and all viewers must use the same type of software as
each other. The server breaks up each into small parts or chunks and these parts are then redistributed by
the server to viewers connected to the server. These viewers send on these parts to other viewers, who
do the same. In this way, viewers become connected to a network of other viewers, all of whom are
downloading small parts of the stream at the same time that they are uploading the same parts to others.
The software installed by each viewer is able to reconstruct the stream as it arrives and – usually – show it
to the viewer without any pausing or buffering in the video. Quality improves with more people
connected to the stream.
As previously mentioned, direct streaming sites such as Mogulus and Ustream have also started to be used for
sports broadcast redistribution but are not yet prevalent enough to be classed as a significant problem. Most
such services employ content delivery networks which help cache and distribute streams, lowering the cost of
live streaming. All services of this sort carry significant amounts of advertising which represents their dominant
business model.
3.1.1
How does a stream begin?
The technology required to begin a stream that can be re-broadcast via a Unicast or P2P-based site is simple
and available to many internet users. Indeed, most streaming channels begin with a standard home computer
attached to a typical residential broadband connection. Any computer with a television tuner card installed
(becoming a standard piece of hardware on many home computers or available for a small cost at any
computer store) can re-broadcast a stream. The software to achieve this is freely downloadable: for instance,
Windows Media Player can produce a unicast stream which can then be offered to others while P2P services
such as SopCast, TVAnts, and TVU offer a small piece of free software which will re-broadcast an incoming
television channel or video within their own distribution services.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
3.2
Unicast streaming
For pirated re-transmissions of sports events, sites which use
a unicast server offer a direct stream to connected viewers,
who connect only to the streaming server to access the
content on offer (unlike P2P-based system where the viewer
is provided parts of the stream from many different users).
Sites which offer unicast streaming of live sports often
require a paid subscription. Direct streaming of video feeds
to a large number of users is demanding of bandwidth and
processing power and can lead to substantial costs. Such
sites are often run on a commercial basis and tend to deploy well-known logos and sleek design to offer an air
of authenticity. For instance, the screenshot above shows a typical unicast site featuring logos from Windows
Media, SkySports, Setanta Sports, EuroSport, and the NASN.
Payment is offered by Visa and Mastercard with pay-per-view and
‘sports pack’ subscriptions available. Many potential subscribers
would view such a site as legitimate.
Once subscribed, the streams can be received by the viewer
direct into any typical media player. Streams are of a good quality
and generally suffer little from buffering or pausing.
3.3
P2P-based Live Streaming
A wide range of P2P-based live streaming services are available online. Most are developed in China – the first
streaming service of this kind to emerge to popular recognition, Coolstreaming, was released by its Chinese
authors in 2002. It has been followed by other services such as PPLive, PPStream, UUSee, SopCast, TVAnts, and
PPMate5.
There are two main P2PTV services which are commonly used for streaming live sporting events: SopCast and
TVAnts (both of which originate in China). Streams are certainly found on other services but the key point
about SopCast and TVAnts is that each allows users to create and upload their own streams. It is this ability
that is a prime reason why sports fans have adopted them above others for the purpose of streaming or
consuming unauthorised transmissions of live events. The online communities created and used by followers
of sports encourage users to share streams and to grant access to desired events to others with the same
5
A number of these services have received substantial injections of venture capital over the last two years. US$23.5m was invested in
UUSee by a range of companies including a VC firm owned by Disney while PPLive has raised over US$30m in total.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
interest. Just as a technology like bittorrent encourages users to upload to others a similar amount of content
to that they have already downloaded, followers of particular teams or simply particular sports are almost
always happy to actively set up a stream or at least share consumption of a stream with others.
These two primary facilitating services are discussed below, together with a list of other providers on which
sporting streams also appear. First, an outline of how the typical user will locate content offered through a
streaming service is outlined. Following this, the technology basis of P2P streaming services is outlined.
3.3.1
Accessing live streaming content
To demonstrate the ease with which live P2Pbased streams can be accessed, this section
recaps the typical user process involved in
locating live streams of sporting content. As
with much on the internet, the start is a Google query – in this case, for “free live sports”. As the image shows,
the first result is a site called MyP2P.eu, a site offering “Free Live Sports on your PC”, including football, MLB,
and NBA content:
Myp2p is a site specialized in schedules for all kind of Sports. You can watch Live Sports by using our schedules. The
information we give is fully free. You only need some clients to download and then you're ready to go. Prepare to
watch a lot of Football, MLB, NHL, NBA, Cricket, Tennis and many more.
The MyP2P site is one of many that collates
and indexes links for live P2P-based streams.
On MyP2P, these links are organised by sport
and also by schedule. An automatically
updated “Now Playing” list shows any event
for which live streams are available at that
moment.
The owners of the MyP2P site regularly
inform visitors of major upcoming events –
“Don't miss it, be sure to follow it!”. For instance, in early May 2008 a news post talked of the “great weekend”
of sport coming up, listing baseball from the MLB and Japan; basketball from the NBA Playoffs and Spanish
ACB; football from the Bundesliga, Seria A, La Liga, Premier League, playoffs in the Dutch and Greek leagues
and the start of the Brazilian football season; tennis from the ATP and WTA tours; golf from the PGA and
European tours; cycling from the Giro D’Italia; motorsports with the Turkish Formula One grand prix, Nascar,
and GP2; ice hockey from the NHL Playoffs and IIHF World Championship; plus boxing, rugby, badminton,
beachvolley, and table tennis.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
Each event listed on MyP2P – either in
the ‘Now Playing’ section or when all
live or upcoming events for a particular
sport is selected – leads to a number of
alternative live streams for the event.
For instance, choosing the Japanese
baseball match at the top of the ‘Now
Playing’ list above shows detail about
the match and links to 7 streams rebroadcasting 2 separate channels
which are showing the game live.
With the relevant software installed, clicking “Play” on any of
the listed links launches the client, which connects to the
SopCast tracker, contacts other viewers, and – after a short
delay - begins to stream the broadcast. This process all
happens without the intervention of the user. Once the P2P
software has been installed once, the user simply clicks the
link and everything else – from launching the software to
displaying the stream – occurs without the need for user
involvement.
Like many similar sites, MyP2P also
offers detailed guides on how to install
and setup each piece of streaming
software which may be required to view
a stream. This is usually a once-only
requirement
software
–
works
once
installed,
the
automatically
to
recognise and broadcast the stream.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
3.3.2
Technology Outline
The technical architecture behind the streaming communication used by live P2P streaming services is broadly
similar across all services. In many ways, it is similar to the swarming technology used by bittorrent. Each
service relies on a central server known as a ‘tracker’. The tracker organises and manages the different
streams or channels available, recording and distributing information about the viewers connected to each
stream – though not actually distributing any of the video content at all.
A distributed stream first requires a video or television signal to re-broadcast. Services such as SopCast
allow users to download their own broadcast software. This takes a television signal received by a tuner
card into a computer – or another already existing video source – and enables the user to upload the
signal to others. The software also informs the tracker that a new stream or channel is available.
As viewers attempt to connect to that channel – after seeing a new channel appear in their client or a link
posted on a portal site – their client connects to the tracker. The tracker supplies information to the client
about other clients already connected to the stream.
The client then contacts these others to request that they send parts of the video stream to other clients.
This stream is split into sections of varying amounts – for example, into thirty second sections. These
sections are then split further into chunks.
The client receives chunks of each section from one or more of the others with whom it is in
communication and reassembles them into the larger section, while passing the chunks to other users as
requested.
Once an entire section has been received, the client displays it to the viewer. At the same time that it is
displaying this first section of the stream, the client receives the next section and if that second section of
the stream is completely received by the client before the user has finished viewing the previous section,
then the user notices no transition or buffering period between each section, and encounters what
appears to be a seamless stream.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
3.4
3.4.1
Main P2P streaming services
SopCast
URL:
www.sopcast.org
Company:
SopCast Organization
Type of player:
Standalone player; browser plugin
Current client version:
3.0.3 (30 April 2008)
Revenue model: Advertising only (text and banner ads on web site, small image advert within software which appears
before the stream is shown)
Alexa rank | reach May 2008:
13,826 worldwide | 1,240 per million internet users
Top five visitor countries (Alexa):
United States
12.9%
United Kingdom
11.7%
Italy
10.3%
Spain
9.3%
India
5.6%
SopCast is the most popular service for unauthorised
live streams of sporting events. Figures from
NetResult show that as a proportion of all live P2Pbased streams detected for football, basketball, and
cricket, SopCast accounts for between 50% and 60%
of all streams.
The developers of the client offer a downloadable
software application as well as a browser-based
plugin which allows users to embed live video
streams into web sites, blogs, and forums. The
application is available for Windows and Linux. It is
basic in appearance but was quickly adopted by
viewers seeking sporting content.
The developers are eager to work with known groups of users who focus on sporting piracy. For instance, after a recent
version of SopCast was found to contain bugs, the owners of MyP2P provided private beta testing of a new version through
their forums, with feedback sent direct to SopCast developers. As discussed elsewhere in this report, the service has also
proved willing to cooperate – though after some pressure – with some sporting rights owners and SopCast no longer
allows MLB streams to be uploaded or carried. This action demonstrates the high level of control which the developers
exercise over the service: unlike many file sharing networks like bittorrent, there are a number of points in the SopCast
technical architecture where the developers and owners can alter, delete, or ban individual streams (and registered users).
As with most P2P streaming software, direct links to SopCast streams can be placed on forums and link portals for others.
This allows for the simple distribution of streams: when all that is required to be shared is a hyperlink, providing access is
simple. Further, SopCast provide a browser-based plugin: this means that streaming video can be directly embedded into a
web page, obscuring the standalone application and making stream connection as simple as loading a web page.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
SopCast – and most other P2P-based live streaming services – also
offer the ability to embed videos within web pages. In this
manner, content can be viewed within the browser by a user and
without have to load the external software applications. This
makes viewing content as simple as loading a web page.
The SopCast tracker – the central server which manages and
controls the streams and those connected to them – is accessible
to any registered user (and registration is free). This means that a
user on a basic residential broadband connection can stream
television content of their choice direct to thousands by using the
SopCast client and backend technology to handle the multicast
distribution.
One of the most significant aspects about the visitors to SopCast’s
main web site compared to those for most other peer to peer
television services is the low proportion of viewers from China. The countries which supply most visitors to the main
SopCast site tend to be those with strong Western sporting interests: for instance, basketball in the US, football in the UK,
Italy, and Spain, cricket in India. The strong western interest is also shown by the fact that the main web site and the client
itself are natively in English (though Chinese translations are available). However, this does not mean that Chinese viewers
do not visit SopCast streams (figures from NetResult show that half or more of viewers on many sporting streams are
located in China) – for many viewers, once the software is installed (and SopCast can be downloaded from many mirror
sites as well as sopcast.org) there can be little reason to visit the main web site.
3.4.2
TVAnts
URL:
www.tvants.com
Company:
Unknown6
Type of player:
Software application; browser plugin
Current client version:
1.0.0.59 (23 December 2007)
Revenue model:
Advertising only (within client)
Alexa rank | reach May 2008:
17,161 worldwide | 1,005 per million internet users
Top five visitor countries (Alexa):
United States
15.2%
China
10.4%
Spain
8.7%
Italy
6.5%
Germany
5.7%
As with SopCast, TVAnts is developed in China. However, the service is mainly aimed at Chinese users: the main web site
and the client are entirely in Chinese with no translation available. Sites such as MyP2P provide English-language
translations and installation and operation guides for the client. Once installed, it is fairly easy to use and as most Western
6
Contact details on the tvants.com web site use a Hotmail email address.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
users will access streams on the service through a direct link on a portal site, the fact that the software application user
interface is in Chinese is not of significant importance.
TVAnts emerged out of an academic project at Zhejiang University. Control now appears to have passed to a different
organisation, though this company does not appear to be profit-making. Contact details provide a hotmail address and
there is no advertising present on the web site or within the client.
As with SopCast, TVAnts provides a tracker to which any user can upload and broadcast a stream from their own computer
and also allows streams to be embedded into web pages. The owner has the same level of control over streams carried by
its service as SopCast and can remove streams or prevent particular users from uploading if necessary.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
4 Case Study: Cricket
Participating organisations: Cricket Australia; England and Wales Cricket Board
4.1
Introduction
Cricket has a large and passionate fan base in India and Pakistan and is closely followed in England and
Australia. Over the last two decades, the sport has seen a significant growth in the number of international
matches played within a variety of different formats. New tournaments such as the Twenty20 World Cup and
the Indian Premier League have produced an ever-larger audience.
4.2
Widespread live streams
Data gathered by NetResult demonstrates that cricket has become the sport most affected by unauthorised
streams of live events, particularly in countries such as India and Pakistan where the sport is immensely
popular. In early May 2008, a SopCast channel for an Indian Premier League game between Rajasthan Royals
and Delhi Daredevils saw over 120,000 viewers watching the game. The highest number of views ever
recorded by NetResult for a single P2P stream for cricket was more than 700,000.
Since October 2005, NetResult have monitored a number of International Cricket Series and Tournaments
including:
Pakistan v England (2005)
2007 ICC Cricket World Cup
Australia v South Africa 2005/2006,
England v India (2007)
DLF Cup (2006)
Various series from late 2007 through to
April 2008
2006 ICC Champions Trophy
2006/2007 Ashes
During these nine events, the company located 941 cases which involved the unauthorised streaming of live
cricket. Of these, 264 cases were dedicated servers used by streaming sites to provide a Unicast stream direct
to viewers. A further 228 cases were sites which required a subscription to access the cricket content.
Peer to peer streams made up 280 cases but it is clear that this figure and the proportion of peer to peer
streaming used in cricket are growing. In 2005, most streams located by NetResult for cricket were unicast
streams, for which the provider often required viewers to pay in order to cover the cost of dedicated servers
with enough bandwidth to support the direct streaming offered to what may be thousands of simultaneous
users. Yet over the last two years, NetResult have found that peer to peer technology has become the
dominant method used to stream live cricket through the internet. Not only has the technology become faster
and easier to use, but P2P-based streaming services are almost always free at the point of consumption
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
because the costs of re-broadcasting streams are so much cheaper: the technology generally makes use of
viewer’s own upstream bandwidth to deliver the content to those within the stream and there is little
requirement for fast servers7. The chart below shows the proportion of unauthorised streams located by
NetResult which were P2P-based rather than Unicast streams for monitored events between 2007 and 2008.
A direct consequence of the growing
availability of this level of free P2P-based
streaming services has been a reduction
in the number of dedicated sites that
require users to pay for direct (unicast)
streaming access. The graph across shows
the changing popularity of different types
of streaming offering: the number of P2Pbased (free) streams increase over the
last three years as paid sites fall in
importance.
Streams broadcast with the SopCast service make up the majority (around 60%) of streams of P2P-based live
streaming for cricket.
7
Though at least the initial uploader of the content must have access to a connection fast enough to stream the live broadcast at a speed
which does not induce pauses or buffering.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
Free hosting and streaming sites
NetResult have also recently recorded a significant growth in the number of embedded streams or links to
streams found on free hosting services, particularly those connected to free blogging hosting. Blogspot (now
owned by Google) is a common destination: it takes only a few minutes to set up and post content of any kind
to a Blogspot-hosted page. There is no cost and financial penalty if and when a page or site is removed.
Relevant subdomains (such as ipl-on-sopcast.blogspot.com) are freely available which help promote each new
site and page. Users post comments which update others as to working streams in real-time as a game
progresses. As the P2P services have developed clients which can be directly embedded into web pages,
streams can also be placed direct in each blog.
Before the start of the Indian Premier League event, NetResult had directly monitored and taken action
against 74 different Blogspot sites, with that number expected to increase significantly while the IPL matches
took place. Cricket has also seen some streams appearing on the free user video streaming services like
Justin.tv and Ustream mentioned earlier in this report.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
5 Case Study: Football
Participating organisations: Deutsche Fussball Liga; Premier League; European Professional Football
Leagues; FIFA; Football Association (England); Football League (England); Ligue de Football Professionel;
Scottish Premier League; UEFA.
5.1
Introduction
Football is widely believed to be the most popular sport in the world. 240 million people are reported to
regularly play the game. FIFA state that the 2006 FIFA World Cup was shown on television in 214 countries
across 376 channels with a cumulative television audience of 26 billion 8. The game arouses enormous passion
amongst many supporters at national, club, and community level. The national leagues of most European
countries have large match attendances and substantial live television audiences.
5.2
Overall Comparison
Monitoring looked at live piracy activity across four major European football leagues: the Premier League, the
German Bundesliga, the Spanish La Liga, and the Italian Serie A. The results are summarised in the table below
with each league then discussed in detail. Monitoring for La Liga and Serie A comprised a snapshot of games
across a weekend to provide an idea of popularity rather than the season-long monitoring conducted for the
Premier League and Bundesliga.
On average for each of the four leagues, 91 infringing sites were found. However, the Premier League appears
to face the worst problem, with 177 sites found by NetResult during season 2007-08 (barring the final
weekend). The majority of all sites located were connected to P2P-based streaming – either as a site offering a
link or embedding a stream or as a technology developer. Most sites were free to the user (though almost all
carried advertising of some sort), though this figure was lower for the Premier League where there were more
Unicast sites.
It is important to note that the figures for infringing sites count each located site once only: thus a portal site
like MyP2P which is likely to feature links to almost all football matches from the four leagues shown below
will count only a single time, despite providing links to many hundreds of individual matches.
Most viewers of monitored streams were based in China. Audience distribution data is taken from only a small
sample of P2P streams for each league but reflects a large enough sample to show the large usage of such
services in mainland China. The regional popularity of each league is discussed further below.
8
http://www.fifa.com/aboutfifa/marketingtv/factsfigures/tvdata.html
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
League
Monitoring
period
Infringing
Sites
P2P
Based
Unicast
Based
Paid
Free
Viewers in
China
English Premier
League
German
Bundesliga
Spanish La Liga
2007-08
season
2007-08
season
177
63%
37%
27%
73%
49%
Viewers
outside
China
51%
85
96%
4%
10%
90%
73%
27%
49
98%
2%
14%
86%
55%
45%
53
96%
4%
17%
83%
57%
43%
91
88%
12%
17%
83%
57%
43%
Italian Serie A
Snapshot
during 200708 season
Average
5.3
Example: Premier League
As one of the world’s most popular football leagues, broadcast rights to the (English)
Premier League are sold to 207 countries and widely distributed in Asia where the
Premier League has a significant following. Content is commonly made available on
television but is increasingly available online and through other platforms. Many
countries have the games on subscription television channels – indeed, live Premier
League football is currently shown only on such channels in the United Kingdom.
Internet based methods of viewing games are therefore often sought by fans who are
looking to circumvent pay-TV services.
During the 2007-2008 Premier League season, 177 different sites were located which contained or were
connected to unauthorised streaming of matches. Of these, 122 (63%) used P2P methods to distribute the
content with the remaining 37% streaming direct through Unicast means. Of the P2P streaming sites, 70
embedded streams into a web page on a site while 38 provided direct links to streams found on P2P streaming
services or clients such as SopCast.
Compared to the other three leagues in the comparison table in 5.1 above, the Premier League has a much
greater problem with paid sites: 27% of sites were accessible only after payment was made. This likely reflects
the high level of demand for Premier League games as some site owners realise that a section of viewers are
prepared to pay for guaranteed access to Premier League games.
NetResult also monitored the two largest streams for an important match between the top two clubs in the
Premier League in April 2008. The match was broadcast on the subscription channel Sky Sports in the UK and
offered through various other broadcast means in other countries. In total, 238,000 viewers are estimated to
have watched the game on the two SopCast streams. A regional analysis of a sample of unauthorised viewers
of each stream was conducted. The results are shown in the chart below.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
Clearly, Chinese viewers dominated the two streams, with just under half of all viewers located in the country
(together with another 10% in Hong Kong). This shows both a high level of interest in the game in China
(where one of the teams are particularly
popular) but also the high level of usage
of P2P streaming services in the
country. The UK, home of the Premier
League, contributed a total of 13% of
viewers, the vast majority of which
likely were not willing to pay for a
subscription to the sports channel
showing the game. After these three
countries, the USA contributed 5% and
Australia 2% (both of which are English
speaking).
5.4
Example: Bundesliga
During the 2007-08 season, NetResult located 85 sites or servers providing unauthorised
live streams of Bundesliga games. The proportion of P2P-based streams was much higher
than for the Premier League: 96% of infringing sites were using P2P technologies to
provide streams or otherwise linking to or embedding a P2P stream. Only three sites were
located providing a Unicast stream and eight sites were found which required a
subscription to access live streams. The influence of China is again reflected in the country base of the
infringing sites: 73% were based in the country with only 27% outside China.
It is also possible to stream many games from the German Bundesliga through the Bwin online betting service:
potential viewers register with Bwin who are able to offer authorised streams to their members through
established agreements with sporting leagues. Yet there are restrictions involved: for instance, viewers in
Germany cannot watch Bundesliga games through Bwin and all viewers must deposit money in their Bwin
account to be able to access the streams, limiting the popularity of this method. (Similarly, Bet365 are able to
provide links to many non-football sports such as tennis to registered users). There is significantly less interest
in the Bundesliga outside Germany than for the Premier League, La Liga, or Serie A outside their host
countries.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
5.5
Example: La Liga
Over the course of a single weekend of monitoring in April 2008, 49 sites were
located which offered access to unauthorised streams of La Liga matches. 80% of
these sites provided links to streams P2P-based with a further 5% being sites of P2P
developers. Only a single Unicast server was located. 14% of the located sites
required a subscription to access the content.
A high proportion of viewers of streams for two monitored matches were located in
the league’s home country, Spain, while China and the UK represented the second and third most popular
regions for viewers. Both matches were on subscription television channels in Span.
5.6
Example: Serie A
Over the course of a weekend of monitoring of Serie A matches, 53 infringing sites were
located, a similar figure to that for La Liga. Of these, 88% were related to P2P streaming –
75% of all located sites were distributors offering links or embedding streams.
Subscriptions were necessary to access nine sites (17%). Of all 53 infringing sites, 57%
were based in China.
A SopCast stream of a match between Inter Milan v Cagliari was
monitored in late April 2008. The stream was of the Guangdong Sports
Chinese television channel and had Chinese language commentary. The
stream had 169,000 viewers, 45% of which were located in China with
17% in Italy itself.
5.7
Other Leagues and tournaments
Football content is available through live streaming services for a wide range of leagues and tournaments. For
instance, many matches in the Romanian Liga I Bürger are available through direct unicast streams offering
Telesport.ru and RO Sports channels, though SopCast streams are also usually available for these more
specialised events. Scottish Premier League and English Football League matches can usually be found where
they are being broadcast on live television.
Matches in tournaments like the UEFA Champions League are always well represented on live streams given
the level of interest in the major European clubs which play in the competition.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
Monitoring of the 2008 FA Cup Final on May 17th 2008 found 46 sites or servers streaming the event. 34 of
these were P2P-related (74%). Of the 46 infringers found, 46% (21) were based in China; 25 were not (54%).
Two SopCast streams of the match were viewed by a total of 139,000 users. On one of the streams, 68% of
viewers were based in Hong Kong. An earlier FA Cup 5th Round match in February 2008 between Manchester
United and Arsenal was also monitored and two Sopcast streams showed nearly 300,000 viewers. The lower
figures for the final compared to the earlier match likely reflect the lesser-known teams that made it to the
final.
5.8
Popularity on File Sharing Networks
Envisional tracked a number of Champions League matches on the two major file sharing networks, bittorrent
and eDonkey. The aim was to monitor the number of post-event downloads of copies of the entire match.
In November 2007, a group match between Manchester United and Roma was monitored. Overall, 9,100
downloads were tracked on bittorrent and 800 on eDonkey.
On 23 April 2007, the second leg of the semi final between Manchester United and Barcelona was monitored.
The match was much anticipated after a 0-0 draw at the Camp Nou and as expected, downloads were higher
than for the group match earlier in the season: 11,000 obtained the match through bittorrent and 1,800
through eDonkey.
Analysis of the peers involved in downloading the most popular version of the match showed a wide range
without the focus on China seen from
live peer to peer streaming. This
demonstrates the worldwide usage of
bittorrent. France, the US, and the UK
showed the largest proportion of
downloaders. Interestingly, Spain (the
home country of Barcelona) is very
low in terms of downloads on
bittorrent. However, this fits with
what we know about file sharing in
Spain where eDonkey is extremely
popular and bittorrent much less so.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
6 Case Study: Basketball
Participating organisation: National Basketball Association
6.1
Introduction
The global popularity of the National Basketball Association has
continued to grow. Games from the NBA are currently broadcast in
more than 200 countries and territories across 41 languages. NBA
content is extremely popular in China, where the NBA has more
than 50 authorised telecast partners in greater China. The
popularity of the sport in China has been furthered by the
successful introduction of a number of prominent Chinese-born
players into the league. According to NetResult, an estimated 78%
of viewers of unauthorised streamed NBA games are located in
China.
6.2
Live streaming data
Over the past two NBA seasons, 172 sites have been found which provided unauthorised streams of NBA
games online. Of these, just under three-quarters (74%) were related to P2P streaming and most of these
directly embedded streams with 30% offering links to these streams. SopCast is by far the most utilised P2P
service found to offer NBA streams without authorisation.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
6.3
Audience size and composition
On the 16th December 2007, a total of almost 1.1 million views were registered on a SopCast channel that
streamed the Dallas Mavericks v Houston Rockets game. From a large sample of those connected to this game,
by far the largest percentage (78%) were located in China. This is the largest documented viewing for a
SopCast NBA stream and was likely enhanced by the inclusion of Yao Ming, a Chinese-born player who
participated in the game.
Since March 2008, the number of viewers on SopCast has started to decline slightly. This slight fall in SopCast
viewership may be due to the NBA’s recent partnerships with PPLive and PPStream (see below), although the
decline also could be attributed to the migration of viewers to other streaming sites such as TVAnts and
TVKoo. For example, the April 26th 2008 Boston Celtics v Atlanta Hawks Playoff game streamed on a SopCast
channel had just over 125,000 views, although this game was not streamed legitimately by either of the NBA’s
partners, PPLive or PPStream. The reduced number of views for this stream also may have been affected by
the fact that no Chinese-born player participated in the game.
While China is the most significant problem for the NBA, the problem of unauthorised streaming is not limited
to China. Over the past year NetResult has identified streaming websites in Europe, the United States, and
Canada engaged in the unauthorised streaming of NBA games.
6.4
Partnership Strategies
Recognising the popularity of their association’s content in China, the NBA chose to pursue a strategy most
likely to have an immediate impact on the problem of unauthorised streaming. The organisation partnered
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
with some of the most widely viewed sites distributing unauthorised streams of NBA games. Services were
created with both PPLive and PPStream to allow a large number of NBA games to be offered live through each
developer’s technology, at no cost to the end user. Providing these legitimate streams of NBA programming
could have yielded a positive effect: according to data from NetResult, the average number of viewers of
unauthorised streams of NBA games has declined since 2007, although the number of NBA games being
streamed without authorisation has remained the same.
As mentioned earlier in the report, the ability and desire to pursue a similar business model may not be
present for other sporting leagues – particularly in the near-term when exclusive rights agreements have
already been established for many sports in China and elsewhere.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
7 Other participating sports
7.1
Introduction
The final section of this report examines the problem of internet-based piracy as it affects the other
participant organisations. This is not to suggest that these sports have any less of a problem than cricket,
football, and basketball – sports which were chosen as case studies because of the range of data available and
the particular nature of the issues surrounding them.
7.2
Baseball
Participating league: Major League Baseball
Live telecasts of Major League Baseball (MLB) games are frequently pirated
online. This is despite the fact that the internet and interactive media
company of MLB (MLB Advanced Media, L.P. or MLBAM), offers a subscription-based online
service through which most MLB games are available live to Internet end-users on a
worldwide basis. MLB.TV is currently priced at $79.95 for a yearly subscription.
MLBAM reports that in 2007 it documented more than 3,200 unauthorised live internet retransmissions of
MLB game telecasts, primarily through P2P services located in China. During the current 2008 MLB season
thus far, documented incidents have increased by more than 25%.
Within the 2007 MLB season, SopCast service was responsible for a large number
of these incidents but following SopCast’s decision earlier this year to ban
unauthorised MLB streams from its service, the centre of activity has shifted to
the TVAnts service (also based in China).
The continued growth of this type of digital piracy is underscored by MLBAM’s recent experience. Despite the
fact that vigorous rights enforcement led to the closure of SopCast to pirated MLB game telecasts, piracy
incidents are up by more than 25%. The range of services available and the ease with which users can move
from one to another as required means that the locus of piracy of MLB games has simply shifted elsewhere.
Finally, it should be noted that based on its rights enforcement efforts (which include monitoring of linking
sites and message boards), MLBAM believes that the bulk of the audience for the pirated games on Sopcast
and TVAnts is outside China, demonstrating the international nature of the interest in live streaming and in
MLB games.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
7.3
Tennis
Participating organizations: All England Lawn Tennis Club; French Tennis Federation; Lawn Tennis
Association; Tennis Australia
From the start of 2006, three grand slam tournaments have been monitored each year: Wimbledon, the
Australian Open, and Roland Garros, making a total of seven events at the time of this report (the 2006, 2007,
and 2008 Australian Open and the 2006 and 2007 Wimbledon and French Open). During that time, 129 sites
were located featuring unauthorised tennis streams. The majority of these (95) were related to live P2P
streams, either as developers or link distributors (portal sites).
Only a small number of dedicated streaming sites and
servers were located, indicating that it is rare for a
server or site to be produced specifically for the purpose
of streaming tennis events to internet users. This is likely
down to the low demand for such a service. However,
there are indications that the situation is becoming
worse for tennis – particularly during grand slams – as
fans better understand the technology available and the
opportunities
offered
by
live
streaming.
While
monitoring for the 2008 Australian Open, NetResult
located 59 sites offering unauthorised streams or linking
to those streams, compared to just 70 such sites in total for six tournaments (an average of 11.6 sites per
tournament) between 2006 and 2007.
Of the 79 distributors or portals of P2P streams, 55 (69%) directly embedded a stream with the remaining
number providing direct links to similar streams. Only two ‘blogspot’ sites were located featuring a tennis
stream, showing a strong difference in profile to cricket.
7.4
Australian Rules Football
Participating league: Australian Football League
Australian rules football has a strong core following in its home country but is little known or supported by
those not from Australia. However, as the country has one of the largest proportions of expatriates living
abroad, particularly in Commonwealth destinations like the UK, there is a small but strong demand for AFL
content beyond the Australian border. Between four and eight games are shown live (or near-live) on free-toair television in Australia with other games and content available on subscription services. The digital rights for
AFL games are granted to Telstra. Full audio commentary on all games is freely available worldwide online but
the company does not offer any authorised live videos streams of games online. However, a comprehensive
highlights package is available through the BigPond Australian ISP to subscribers in the country. It is therefore
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
surprising that AFL games are rarely located on live P2P streaming services. The fact causes some
consternation amongst those looking for live action as a recent thread on the MyP2P portal forums
demonstrated:
Hey everybody. Will/can anybody post some Aussie Rules Football (AFL) please? Thank you!
no live streams mate. I just listen to live games through AFL game day live (3 or 4 Aussie radio stations) and then
watch the games 2 days later on bigpond footy TV. Its not perfect, but its more than we had last year.
This has an effect on the range and type of action taken by the AFL against those offering unauthorised access
to their content. There is (at present) little need for a service which patrols the internet for live streams,
though it is always important to monitor this situation on an ongoing basis as there is a clear demand for this
type of service. The AFL has had success in attempts to control the spread of post-event content. The threat of
legal action against eight bittorrent sites which carried post-event games or highlights was successful. For
instance, AussieTorrents, which specialised in offering Australian sports to its members, was shut after a
complaint from the AFL and Diwana, another private bittorrent tracker, removed all AFL content to escape
litigation.
Telstra’s concerns around unauthorised use of their footage at the user level has focused on UGC sites with
demand letters sent to a number of individual infringers.
7.5
Rugby
Participating leagues: International Rugby Board, Rugby Football League, 6 Nations Rugby, Rugby Football
Union
The streaming profile for Rugby Union and Rugby League is very similar to that for tennis: few dedicated
servers or other sites, with most infringing content offered through general P2P streaming portals and known
developers. During the 2007 and 2008 Six Nations and 2007 Rugby World Cup (three events in total), 70 sites
were located which concerned the live streaming of rugby matches. 52 of these sites (75%) were linked to live
P2P-based streaming.
It is possible that the relatively lower
number of cases for rugby – even compared
to tennis – is because there may be less
interest in the sport in China at this stage,
home of the main P2P developers and
many of the channels available on such
services. In addition, many of the countries
in which rugby is popular will show
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
important rugby matches on free-to-air television as well.
Monitoring by Envisional for a separate project shows that Rugby Union matches are available on the eDonkey
file sharing network, particularly where those matches include the French national team. Analysis of
downloads of a number of matches from the 2007 Rugby World Cup found numerous copies of the France V
England semi-final on the network as well as earlier group matches featuring the team. eDonkey is heavily
used in France.
Information from the Rugby Football League indicated that their main concern (apart from UGC sites) was with
the availability on bittorrent of games post-broadcast. After major RFL events, the league had noted pirated
content appear on popular trackers such as ThePirateBay.
7.6
Motorsports
Participating sport: Formula One
Monitoring of the 2007 Formula One season located 79 infringing sites, with 61% using P2P methods to
distribute content. A relatively high proportion of sites required a subscription to access streams (20%)
compared to the 80% which provided content for free. 56% of the infringing sites were located in China.
The most popular single stream for the first four races of the 2008 season was analysed, with viewing figures
ranging from 56,000 to 152,000 for the most popular race. Interestingly, a SopCast stream for the 2008 Turkish
Grand Prix showed the highest number of viewers from Finland, likely a result of interest in Finnish drivers
Kimi Räikkönen and Heiki Kovalainen.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
7.7
Athletics
Participating organisations: London Marathon
Comprehensive coverage of major athletics events (such as the Olympics and World Athletics Championships)
can be found on live streaming services. Other events such as IAAF Grand Prix, Golden League events, and
marathons appear with much less regularity.
7.8
Golf
Participating organisation: PGA European Tour
The wide range of regular golfing events across the world which are
televised mean that there are golf tournaments that are often
streamed live. This includes regular PGA and European Tour events
as well as the four majors. However, there are rarely more than two
or three individual streams from which to choose for most
tournaments and audience figures appear to be low, except for final
day action of major tournaments.
7.9
American Football
Participating organisation: National Football League
During the relatively short NFL season, almost all televised games can be located on live streaming services
online. Streams are popular both with the large following enjoyed by the NFL outside the US (American
football has large pockets of followers in both the UK and Germany) and also with expats eager to see live
matches. However, streams also enable US viewers to get around blackout restrictions in their local markets –
so a New York resident can view New York Giants or Jets games even when those games may not be available
on television in their immediate area.
7.10
Horseracing
Participating organisation: British Horseracing Authority
It is possible to stream live horse racing online, and this is done though traditional broadcaster sites (including
racing specific broadcasters such as At the Races) as well as well-known racing specific sites (such as the Racing
Post). Due to the close historical link between horseracing and betting, streaming is also carried out by sites
primarily offering betting services. Generally, access to such streams is available only to those who sign up
with such sites and deposit money in their accounts. The legal and regulatory framework in relation to the
rapidly growing online sports betting market is complex and confused, with no coordinated cross-border
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
treatment. Under many national laws, it is unlawful, although online bookmaking is legal in the UK and a
number of other markets. Many online operators are sited in tax havens. As technology develops to increase
speeds, it is the view of The British Horseracing Authority that unauthorised streaming will increase as it
represents the most significant promotional tool for unlawful betting activity. This will apply to other sports as
well as racing.
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Digital Piracy of Sporting Events
8 Appendix A: List of Sporting Organisations Involved in Report
To contact the sports, please direct any queries to Oliver Weingarten at sportsrights@sroc.info.

6 Nations Rugby

All England Lawn Tennis Club

Australian Football League

British Horseracing Authority

Cricket Australia

Deutsche Fussball Liga

England and Wales Cricket Board

European Professional Football Leagues

Fédération Française de tennis

FIFA

Football Association

Football League

Formula One

International Rugby Board

Lawn Tennis Association

Ligue du Football Professionnel

Major League Baseball / MLB Advanced Media

Marathons

National Basketball Association

National Football League

PGA European Tour

Premier League

Rugby Football League

Rugby Football Union

Scottish Premier League

Tennis Australia

Scottish Premier League

Tennis Australia

UEFA
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