Half of UK Premier League Footy Fans Have Streamed Matches “Illegally”

A BBC commissioned ComRes interview of 1,000 adults who are regular viewers of Premier League Football has revealed that 47% have used their broadband connections to stream live matches from pirated sources (e.g. unofficially modified Kodi boxes or “illegal” steaming sites).

The results come at a time of heightened competition for premium Sports TV content between BT and Sky (Sky Broadband), which have over the past few years been battling to secure the most rights to different tournaments. Sadly this conflict has also helped to push up the price of related content, while at the same time Sky recently reported a drop of 14% in Premier League TV viewing figures (BT dropped by 2%).

In fairness some of the aforementioned changes in viewership could also be attributed to a number of big name clubs falling out of the Premier League, although copyright holders are more concerned that the rise in piracy from Internet video streaming services could be playing a big role (hardly a surprise when the prices keep rising like they do).

Summary of Survey Results

* 47% of fans have watched a match through an unofficial provider at least once in the past.

* 36% streamed live matches online through an unofficial provider at least once a month.

* 22% streamed live matches online through an unofficial provider at least once a week.

* 65% of fans aged 18-34 have streamed live football matches online through an unofficial provider, which drops to 33% for 35-45 year olds and 13% of those aged 55+.

* The most popular reasons for “illegal” streaming are because a friend/family member does it and they shared (29%), while 25% said the quality of online streaming was good and 24% felt as if premium Sports TV services were not good value for money.

* Interestingly only 12% thought it is legal to stream games online (not through an official provider), while 34% think it is always illegal and 32% don’t know; 4% believe it is not breaking the law but Sky or BT could fine you if they found out, 7% think it is sometimes illegal and 10% believe it is legal to watch but illegal to upload a stream.

Clearly this is an issue that has Rights Holders worried and earlier this year the High Court granted a request by the Premier League (Football Association), which forced Sky Broadband, BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk to block a number of servers associated with infringing match footage. However such servers usually re-emerge in new locations and so the game of whack-a-mole continues.

In April 2017 the European Court of Justice also ruled (here) that video streaming from an unlicensed source could be deemed copyright infringement, although enforcing that would be very difficult and previous attempts to do something similar (2010 Digital Economy Bill) by imposing restrictions on Internet connectivity have not survived (risked penalising millions of people and identifying the actual offender would be difficult on a shared network).