December 6, 2016: As the year of 2016 is marking itself as the rise of the live-streaming all over the world as the best way of marketing and advertising, illegal live-streaming has become the biggest piracy problem in media and entertainment. This is especially problematic for sports, as the crazy fans can do anything to watch their favorite teams live.
A glimpse of that was seen recently in the match between Barcelona vs Real Madrid, considered to be one of the most viewed sports events in the world. While millions of people were tuned in to watch the match between Barcelona and Real Madrid on Saturday, December 3, through authorized live-streaming channels, at least 5.5 million people were watching the match through illegal live-streaming websites. This information is based on a sample of 122 live streams by VFT solutions. And it is suspected that tens of millions of people were watching the match through hundreds of illegal live streams. Not only for soccer, the stats are significantly high for the NFL games where it is reported to be about half-million illegal live streams per week across NFL matches.
This alarming stats shows the risk of illegal live-streaming on the future of live sports.
Illegal viewership threatens the advertising and marketing potential and undermines TV networks. But, many viewers don’t really know the damage from this as they assume that it is perfectly legal to watch from the illegal live-streaming websites. The social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube have made live-streaming possible by any individual which is helping illegal live-streaming boom all over the world.
To check the problem, sports teams, leagues and TV executive producers across the world should join together and adamantly fight against live-streaming piracy and for any other form of piracy in media and entertainment.
