Live sports streaming service DAZN and broadcaster beIN are supporting a new global task force to crack down on sports piracy that costs the industry tens of billions of dollars each year.
The new group will aim to identify and target sports piracy operations and work with the police and organizations such as Interpol and Europol to pursue law enforcement actions to shut them down.
Tackling global sports piracy could lead to an additional $28 billion in annual revenue for the industry, according to a study published by Synamedia.
Many of the majors sports events like the world boxing championships and the uefa champions league final are heavily pirated on illegal streams.
The problem is getting worse as more and more international online services find ways to bypass local broadcasting rules.
However, the use of illegal broadcasts also often comes at a cost.
The industry study found that more than half of sports fans who watched pirated streams were paying for at least a portion of their illegal access, and many were willing to pay to switch to legitimate providers.
The task force will be managed by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), an anti-piracy coalition based in Los Angeles.
He will coordinate Ace’s efforts to target sports piracy operations and collaborate with law enforcement and other partners.
Working with beINAce has already targeted several sports piracy rings over the past year, including the successful shutdown of a popular Morocco-based operation just days before the FIFA World Cup in Qatar last year.
“Intellectual property theft of live sports content is an industry problem, negatively impacting all sports and sports fans and requires a concerted global effort to address it in a meaningful way,” said Shay Segev , Chief Executive Officer of DAZN.
Ed McCarthy, DAZN’s chief operations officer, said the task force would work with broadcasters and rights holders to prosecute “criminal gangs who are harming sport on every level, often using credit card and fan data to illegal purposes”.
It would also seek to challenge governments, regulators and the blue-chip companies that facilitate content theft, he added.
Jan van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Head of Ace, said: “The addition of DAZN and the creation of Ace’s Sports Piracy Task Force marks a turning point for Ace and confirms once again that we are the essential partner for anyone recognize the threat of piracy to their business.”
Overall content piracy could cost up to $71 billion annually in lost revenue, according to the Global Innovation Policy Center. A third of pirated sites also target consumers with malware, according to a report from the Digital Citizens Alliance.
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