European Police Pull Plug on 'Largest' Illegal Streaming Service

8 pointsposted 15 hours ago
by SirLJ
(barrons.com)

9 Comments

defrost

14 hours ago

To the best of my recollection the bulk of demand from paying customers for pirated live streaming comes from the live sports market.

    Eurojust, the European Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation, estimated that the operation — one of the world’s largest illegal streaming services — generated revenues of roughly €3bn a year and caused combined damages of more than €10bn to the affected broadcast companies.

    “The rate of profit you get from these illegal activities with lower risk is equivalent to that of cocaine trafficking,” Francesco Curcio, the criminal prosecutor who led the investigation, told reporters.
Gives an indication of the scale of annual profits for broadcasting boxing, soccer, horse racing, etc. bearing in mind that siphoning away some €10bn of potential income for broadcasters and clubs and illegally selling that for €3bn hasn't put the primaries out of business (although they are actively gatekeeping what they regard as "theirs").

( potential stressed as it's claimed that had "customers" not been paying pirates less then they would, of course, be paying media barons more for the same .. which is not always the case in reality )

sunflowerfly

7 hours ago

Even if you pay for all the correct networks, pirating is often simply easier.

defrost

6 hours ago

I'm old, when I was young most sports were "free to air" on public broadcasters .. the entire ecosystem of Sky Sports etc. locking up viewing for pay to view customers only didn't yet exist.

Live sports streaming as it is today is very much a "robber baron" created marketplace getting rich from what was once more or less "commons" (somewhat of a simplification).

It's transformed from "broadcast costs are covered by barely sufficient income" to "profits in the tens of billions are expected".

Zacharias030

14 hours ago

What was the service called? Never heard of it.

defrost

14 hours ago

Typically a pyramid model - if the EU police here cracked the top tier that were capturing the raw signals then whatever name they gave thmeselves would not be one of the many names used at the base to onsell those illegal captured streams to general punters.