Legal action against facilitators and sites

2.3Legal action against facilitators and sites

The Premier League has been very active in this area, with three major actions targeting five sites with UK owners which were commercially exploiting live streaming of Premier League games and other football matches³. Orders were served on the owners where they could be located. Three of the five sites are now closed. All three cases face issues which demonstrate some of the problems with pursuing country-specific legal actions in the internet era. In one case, the site footballon.net was closed and the owners ordered to disclose various pieces of information about the site and its subscribers. Yet since the order was served, a new site at footballon.info has opened, deliberately replicating the original site. In the second and third cases, the identified owner of each site left the country before the Premier League could serve the judgment orders requiring closure. One of these sites, premiershiplive.net, continues to operate but likely with a different owner who may reside in the Ukraine (where the site is now physically hosted). The Premier League has also recently commenced an action against an Israeli-registered site which offers users access to Premier League matches through the SopCast and TVU P2P services.

The Australian Football League have managed to close one bittorrent portal offering a wide range of AFL content and ensure that another no longer features AFL games of any kind after informing the sites of their legal position and promising legal action if they did not comply.

UEFA was successful in closing a subscription-based streaming site run by three individuals in the UK in 2006. The organisation also regularly issues proactive and reactive warning letters to sites which are known to offer links or embed streams. With all EU broadcasters of UEFA matches – including the Champions League and Euro 2008 – obliged to simultaneously offer the live stream to users in their own country, it is of fundamental importance for unauthorised and illegitimate streams to be rendered inaccessible as soon as possible.

Cricket Australia took action against a particularly sophisticated site offering unauthorised transmissions. The sportontv.com site (which included cricketon.tv) was forced to close after a decision in the Scottish courts but this victory is deemed “largely hollow” by Cricket Australia: the site remains open after regularly shifting hosting providers online, often appearing in jurisdictions with more permissive copyright laws. The owners of the site are sophisticated enough to avoid detection without considerable investigatory and legal efforts from broadcasters, the judiciary and police.

2.4Strategic Partnerships

Yet as already highlighted, the high demand for sporting content as it airs makes post-event sales or ‘catch-up’ transmission of far less importance than offering games or matches as they occur. As yet, only a small number of sporting organisations have attempted to offer events live through streaming services. For instance, MLB Advanced Media has offered a subscription-based online service through which almost all MLB games are available live to internet end-users on a worldwide basis. The National Basketball Association has pursued a successful venture with two non-sports organisation streaming company: faced with a significant problem of unauthorised streams – driven by a substantial desire for access to NBA games in China – the NBA established partnerships with two of the largest live streaming systems in the country. The NBA now has control over the transmission of its games through these partner networks, in addition to obtaining revenue from the distribution of its content and ensuring that the public in China can access NBA content through an additional sanctioned and legitimate source. Although the average number of viewers for unauthorized NBA streams has declined since these partnerships were established, the number of NBA games being streamed without authorisation has remained the same.

Establishing such agreements takes time and inclination and often a need to work within long-standing licensing agreements (as well as a willingness to deal with those who may have previously profited from the unauthorised distribution of a sport’s content). Sports organizations may be forced into considering such partnerships as a result of the inadequacy of effective legal and technological measures to stop unauthorised streaming and, for many sports, current rights agreements mean that it is simply not possible even to enter into negotiations for such arrangements. As a result, this business model still remains unproven.