Background Report on Digital Piracy of Sporting Events

1.2Main piracy methods

It is important to emphasise the unique features of the piracy of sporting broadcasts as opposed to other forms of video-based piracy such as films or other television programs. For sports piracy, the immediacy of access to sporting broadcasts overrides the need for high quality: users simply want the ability to watch the event as it happens. The principle aim of viewers accessing pirated transmissions is to consume the event in the same way as if the scheduled television broadcast was accessible to them. For most users, the intention is to bypass any restrictions placed on the transmission and reception of the event in the user's own country or broadcast area, or to be able to view events which are not shown in that broadcast area at all. The key value is therefore to view – for free – sporting events which would otherwise be inaccessible, either because they require payment in that user's country or because the event is not immediately available live to that user at all. Others yet may seek the freedom to watch the event on their computer rather than the television (the advantage of portability).

Sport has a unique appeal in that it can often be enjoyed by viewers regardless of the region in which it is played or the language in which the commentary is provided. While viewers prefer commentary in their own language, even foreign-language commentary is acceptable for content that is highly sought-after but difficult to obtain.

There are three main ways in which pirated versions of sports are consumed through the internet:

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  Live streams re-broadcast via peer to peer television services or streamed directly from a web server
  
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  Recorded versions of events uploaded to file sharing networks such as bittorrent or eDonkey.
  
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  Highlights placed on UGC sites like YouTube or uploaded to file sharing networks.
  

As outlined above, live streaming of sports events is the most important type of sporting internet piracy – both to the fan, who is able to experience the game or event live, and to the rights owner whose property is infringed and whose revenue is damaged by the unauthorised re-transmission of the event.

Viewers locate unauthorised streams by general internet searching or by word-of-mouth or online guides. Many viewers participate in online communities dedicated to their chosen sport or to streaming in general and these sites provide easy-to-follow tutorials on where to locate and how to access live streams. Other sites advertise on search engines such as Google and Yahoo to attract curious viewers searching for live sports in the hopes of converting them into members.

Large portals which collate and provide one-click access to live streams for a variety of sports are becoming more and more popular. Sites like MyP2P.eu and RojaDirecta provide an extensive number of live streams for broadcasts related to over forty different sports with new content posted every day. A user entering “free live sports” into Google is presented with MyP2P as the first result (see Section 3.3).

These systems work in conjunction with two main types of technology used to power live streaming: unicast, where a viewer makes a direct connection to a streaming server to receive the video stream, and peer to peer (P2P) streaming, where a viewer uses a special software client or browser plugin to connect to a swarm of others viewing the game or event. The way in which these technologies function is discussed further in Section 3. Most P2P streaming services are developed – and heavily used – in China, as viewing figures indicate.

The numbers of those involved in viewing such content can be significant. A single stream of an NBA game in December 2007 was viewed by over one million people with around three-quarters of the viewers believed to be located in China. NetResult have monitored over 700,000 viewers of one cricket match, and the two most popular streams for a Premier League football match in April 2008 were viewed by an estimated total of 238,000 with 49% of those viewers in China (based on a sample).

As well as Unicast and types of streaming, there is also an increasing use for sports piracy of new services which are designed to enable users to broadcast personal streams through the internet. Sites such as Ustream and Justin.tv – which operate rather like a live YouTube – are used by fans of particular teams or sports to re-broadcast received channels. These can then be easily located and streamed direct by viewers (Justin.tv has a dedicated ‘Sports’ category on its homepage). There is no peer to peer element in these services at all – the transmission is most similar to Unicast but most services make use of content delivery networks which cache content at various points on the internet.

The services and sites involved in the live streaming of sporting content can earn revenue in numerous ways. Most commonly, advertising is embedded on web sites or shown before a live stream begins. Widely used internet advertising programs such as Google AdSense or AdBrite are common providers of adverts: such programs permit any site to join as an advertising publisher without any pro-active investigation or ongoing monitoring of participants. As such, the advertising programs provide a revenue stream which helps support the live streaming services and also profit from placed adverts themselves. It is likely that without the presence of such easy-to-use advertising programs, many of the sites and services which facilitate live streaming could not continue to exist, given the costs of the technical means required to stay live.

Other streaming services or portal sites request donations or charge subscription fees. For instance, MyP2P request donations from users while LiveSportOn.TV charge a flat monthly rate for access to streams.

File sharing networks

The continued spread and rise of file sharing networks has been one of the defining aspects of the twenty-first century internet. A range of surveys² find that between 50% and 80% of global bandwidth is consumed by peer to peer file sharing networks such as bittorrent and eDonkey. Envisional estimates that between fifteen and twenty millions users are connected to a peer to peer network at any given time, sharing millions of copies of copyrighted files. The most popular content – such as newly released movies and prime-time television episodes – is downloaded well over one million times each.

On the video (and sporting) side, these traditional file sharing networks share and trade post-event copies of broadcast or theatre content: typically, television episodes are recorded as they are aired and films are taped from a cinema showing or DVD copy and then uploaded. As such, the video available online is not live, meaning that sporting events lose much of their attraction and reinforcing the advantages of the live streaming services discussed above. This means that the most in-demand sporting content is not amongst the most in-demand content on file sharing networks overall. However, the quality tends to be much higher than is available from live streaming with events in a high enough resolution to watch full-screen on a monitor or television.

Envisional tracked downloads of all four 2007-08 UEFA Champions League semi-finals and three end-of-season Premier League matches on the bittorrent network. The most popular match was downloaded a total of 13,200 times worldwide in a two-week period following first appearance.

This report will not focus on sporting piracy which is consumed through UGC sites, though it is an obvious area of concern. The Premier League initiated a class-action lawsuit against Google in May 2007 on the grounds that the YouTube site encouraged and profited from clips of matches uploaded to the site by users. The lawsuit has since been joined by the Rugby Football League, the Scottish Premier League, author Daniel Quinn, the French Ligue de Football Professionnel, Federation Française de Tennis, the National Music Publishers' Association, and Cherry Lane Music Publishing amongst others.