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Leagues Trying to Take Down Illegal Sports Streams

Illegal Streaming Costs Sports Billions, Leagues Want Swift Action

https://frontofficesports.com/illegal-streaming-costs-sports-billions-leagues-want-swift-government-action/

The NFL, NBA, and UFC have sent a joint letter to the US Patent and Trademark Office asking for faster takedowns of illegal streaming.

Illegal Streaming Costs Sports Billions, Leagues Want Swift Action

The leagues are trying to shut down illegal streams. Do you guys think this could be detrimental to free sports streaming? I really hope not.

19 comments

darkdemize

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It's not lost revenue if I was never going to pay for it in the first place.

cyberpunk007

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If I forget my ad blocker or anything, the moment I see an ad on YouTube and I see "ad x/3" with like a 30-60s timer on it I just close the tab and move on. Fuck ads.

theshatterstone54

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Yeah. I was once installing Linux, and decided to open firefox in the live environment and watch a video on YT. Ads. Close tab. Reopen tab. Ads again. Fk it, installed Ublock Origin in the live environment and just watched the video. No ads.

DudePluto

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Yeah I'm not subscribing to a whole service just so I can watch 3/4 of my team's games and no others. I want a service I can subscribe to and see all my team's games, and preferably all the games in one league. If it was multi-league that would be great, but I'd rather subscribe to one league at a time than subscribe to all leagues with randomly blacked out games.

Until then - and I know it's unlikely to ever happen - I won't be spending money on watching sports on tv

OminousOrange

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I'd gladly pay for a reasonably priced service (probably no more than $20/mo, but even that is on the steep side) where I could watch whatever game I'd like with no blackouts. Unfortunately, that doesn't exist, so, here we arr.

kambusha

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Yeah, I wouldn't mind just paying a season-pack for the sport that I'm interested in. Picking & choosing the competitions I want to see, and maybe having the option to pay for 1-off games. This isn't possible though because networks/companies buy exclusive rights, so for one competition I need this subscription, for another I need this. It fucking sucks!

That being said, any recommendations on a good setup for live sports on a smart TV? In the past, I've streamed on a website on my laptop, and then plug in to my TV via HDMi. I've tried Kodi in the past but has been super unreliable for me for live-sports. Any other recommendations?

OminousOrange

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I can't help much on that front. If I'd like to watch on the TV, I do the same and just cast from a laptop or PC. There's IPTV, but it's a whole other rabbit hole that I'm not familiar with.

UsernameLost

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Exactly. I'm not going to pay a fuckload of money for multiple streaming services only to still not see my fucking team every week.

nicetriangle

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VPNs are a pretty solid way to dodge blackouts

VikingHippie

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Once again for those who didn't know or forgot: just like with every other industry making the same complaint, when they say that it "costs billions", that's true in the exact same way as losing a random lottery ticket would cost me millions: completely hypothetically.

In their calculations, every person who watches an illegal stream would, had the stream not been available, pay their ridiculously high prices to watch legally rather than not watch at all.

In reality, the opposite is many times more common and it's frankly journalistic malpractice that mainstream media always just regurgitate that claim as if it was indisputably true.

Like with copaganda, they're covering for predatory practices, in this case charging much more than your target customers can afford and then using draconian measures against those providing an alternative solution that wouldn't have been necessary if the product had been reasonably priced.

dingleberry

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So they are just reporting opportunity cost and the journalists are parroting the numbers.

VikingHippie

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Correct. Opportunity cost being a bunch of bullshit invented by rich people greedy for more, of course.

tryptaminev

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The key here is certainty.

They claim that everyone would have otherwise paid for a subscription to watch it legaly. But that is simply not true.

When you could buy either variation of pasta in the store, where there is hundreds of boxes stapled, so price and availability are certain, you can speak of opportunity costs.

But here the elasticity is extreme. Many people will not buy this if it costs anything at all. Most probably would, if there is one service with reasonable prices where they can watch everyting. Some people are probably not able to watch a legal stream at all, because it isnt licenced to their country.

DudePluto

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I always call it Magic Math. There's so much of it when you start learning about investing/trading. "Buying calls has infinite potential for gains. Selling calls has infinite potential for losses." Like, yeah, that's mathematically true. But at the end of the day it's not practically true, you're just putting a lot of weight on what you could be getting instead of what you are getting.

explodicle

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Whose opportunity cost? I don't get it.

pelikan

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The main thing with free sports streaming is that they are not maintained by pirate enthusiasts. It's sponsored by non licensed betting operators which can't make legal advertizing. This exactly means that any kind of banning of websites or pirate broadcasts would have no effect; siteops would add new unbanned domain to existing infrastructure and would continue their operation. You should say thanks to addictive gamblers for your free sports streaming!

argv_minus_one

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Ludicrously profitable megacorporations demand more profit.

sub_ubi

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The NFL will never get a dime from me for their brain damage sport

nicetriangle

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They did a pretty damn good job stamping out MLB streaming since last year. There's still sources out there but nowhere near as numerous or consistent as they were in like 2019 - early 2022

whodoctor11

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