Major boxing fight shows PPV target for piracy

Nearly three million viewers around the world watched the much-anticipated boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor Saturday through 239 illegally redistributed streams, shows new data from digital platform security company Irdeto. “Piracy is still a problem that has not been addressed,” Gordon Hendren, president of Charlton Strategic Research Inc., said in a phone interview. “So is it a concern for any streaming service? Yes. Is it a concern for a major event, pay-per-view streaming service? Yes, even more so then regular streaming services.” Of the illegal streams identified by Irdeto, 67 were provided through traditional pirate streaming websites while 165 social media streams were distributed from platforms including Facebook Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube and Amazon.com Inc.’s Twitch. About six streams were also found via plugins for media player Kodi. “What made this fight unique was that it was the first of its kind to be available to stream live online and it combined two huge viewer audiences: boxing and UFC,” a Monday Irdeto press release said, pointing to Mayweather’s boxing and McGregor’s mixed martial arts background. Hendren posited two reasons why these big PPV events are more susceptible to piracy. “Because more casual fans would be attracted to that kind of an event and would be willing to…stream it and pirate it because it’s a one-time thing, and secondly, they would be less concerned about the quality of the stream because, again, it’s a one-time event,” he said. Hendren also acknowledged the high price to pay for some of these PPV events, with this past weekend’s super fight costing viewers about $100. The Wire Report reported in 2015 that boxing drew major PPV sports revenues, driven at the time by a fight between Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao. Irdeto spokesman Stephen Russell said in a brief phone call that the company does not currently have the three million viewers figure broken down by country. Sandvine Corp. was also observing the piracy trend over the weekend. In a post published Sunday, the broadband equipment maker noted an increase in piracy for the boxing event due to pirated live TV, “designed and marketed to subscribers as a replacement for their live licensed television service.” It is unlike devices like Kodi, which focuses on video-on-demand (VoD) content, it said. These services include set-top boxes that are pre-configured to access unlicensed live content, such as one from Infomir LLC called Mag254, which includes a monthly fee for a collection of channels. Another service, known as Fab IPTV, offers similar access to live TV, which suggests users in the United Kingdom use a virtual private network to get around the region’s Internet service provider block for football matches. “With these services only growing in popularity, they could pose a serious threat to events in the future,” Sandvine said. “From our previous/ongoing research, on pirated live TV services no single channel accounts for more than 5% of total bandwidth at any given time,” it said. “On Saturday that all changed,” as the fight accounted for 50 per cent of all pirate TV streams, adding about one per cent of all households in a major North American city it studied were pirating the boxing match. “If you factor in that the fight was $99.95 to purchase on pay-per-view , that means that communications service providers and promoters were defrauded of hundreds of thousands of dollars from this sample of households,” Sandvine said. Sandvine added the pirated boxing streams "generated more traffic than Twitch, Facebook and Instagram." Irdeto also noted that 42 advertisements sprung up in one day in the week leading up to the fight, for streaming devices offering the fight on e-commerce sites including Amazon, EBay Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. Irdeto said in the release that it works with the sites to remove such advertisements. But Irdeto noted some of those consumers may also have inadvertently tuned into an illegal stream “due to confusion and clever marketing.” The company said it has seen a rise in pirates creating professional websites, technology and services, “fooling some consumers into thinking they are accessing a legal service.” Rory O’Connor, Irdeto’s senior vice-president of cybersecurity services, noted in the release that live sports are a “cornerstone of global piracy, with thousands of sites providing illegal content attracting millions of viewers.” In a survey earlier this year, Irdeto found that 32 per cent of U.S. consumers watch pirated content, with 10 per cent of respondents saying they are most interested in live sports. At the Canadian Telecom Summit in June, Stewart Johnston, president of BCE Inc.’s Bell Media studios and TSN, noted that new streaming TV services and sports-focused TV-everywhere offerings will help the industry curb piracy and noted the increased cost of sports content. In July, United Kingdom-based Perform Group launched sport-focused over-the-top streaming service Dazn in Canada in a move that came amidst a flurry of streaming service activity. — With reporting by Ahmad Hathout at ahathout@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

Major boxing fight shows PPV target for piracy

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