Background Report on Digital Piracy of Sporting Events

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  This background report on the digital piracy of sporting events has been prepared in response to the OECD Phase II Study on Digital Piracy.
  
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  The intention of this report is to demonstrate the major issues presented to sports organisations by the piracy of their events through the internet. The report illustrates the range of sports affected, the amount of pirated content available, identifies the main methods through which piracy occurs, highlights trends, and discusses some ways in which sports rights owners currently attempt to address the problem of digital piracy.
  
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  Twenty-seven sporting organisations participated in the report, comprising twelve different sports from seven different countries. Seven sports represent international leagues or organisations. All participants are listed in Appendix A.
  
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  The report has been compiled jointly by Envisional and NetResult, UK companies providing intelligence, monitoring, consultancy, and enforcement services to rights holders in this area.
  

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  The sale of broadcast rights represents a major source of revenue to the sports rights owners who participated in this report. This revenue is re-invested and re-distributed throughout those organisations, enabling them to thrive and continue, from grassroots and community level to professional league.
  
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  Digital piracy is therefore one of the most important threats facing sports rights owners today. The ability to distribute, internet-wide, live unauthorised streams of sports events makes it possible for viewers around the world to access content quickly and easily without any compensation to the sports whose rights are infringed. This poses a significant adverse threat to sports organisations, their broadcast licensees and others linked in the global business sector surrounding live sports.
  
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  The range of sports available for viewers to consume through pirated means on the internet is enormous. Sporting organisations receive no revenue for any pirated re-broadcast of their events while those providing the pirated stream often profit financially, commonly from advertising embedded in a web site or software client.
  
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  The most popular methods of sports broadcast piracy on the internet are those which provide immediate and live access to streams of matches, games, or events as they happen. For most users, the intention is to evade restrictions and fees 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.
  
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  Audiences for some unauthorised live streams of sporting events are already over one million viewers. The most popular events have more than fifty separate unauthorised streams offering a free and live re-transmission.
  
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  All sporting organisations affected by the problem of internet piracy are convinced that the phenomenon presents an extraordinarily difficult challenge to which they are ill-equipped to respond given the current legal and technical means at their disposal.
  

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  Live streaming of sporting events is based on two different types of technology: unicast, which streams direct from a server to a viewer, and peer to peer (P2P), which places the viewer in a swarm of others, each of whom are sharing parts of the stream with others in the swarm.
  
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  Sites offering unicast streams often require viewers to pay a subscription for access as servers and bandwidth can be expensive to lease. Sites utilising P2P streams tend to be free to use and have become more popular than unicast-based sites.
  
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  P2P-based streams use technology provided by a small number of services which tend to be developed and based in China. These include the two main services used for the re-transmission of sporting content, SopCast and TVAnts.
  
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  The hardware required to broadcast a live stream on a P2P service can be found on many home computers or purchased cheaply in any computer store. All that is needed is a €50 TV tuner card and suitable software, which is now widely available. Some of the P2P services – such as SopCast and TVAnts – offer free broadcast software to users, allowing anyone to generate and broadcast a stream to thousands of others at no cost.
  

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  Accessing a live stream of a sporting event requires little technical knowledge. The process is simple and aided by large portal sites which collate and index links for a wide range of sports and also provide guides to new users. Such sites are easy to find and navigate.
  

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  All participants in this report strongly believe there are inadequate tools available to properly address the piracy of their content on the internet.
  
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  At present, many organisations expend significant time and resources in monitoring and attempting to control sites which infringe on their rights by offering, linking to, or embedding live streams of their events. Sporting organisations sometimes achieve limited success with these programs. In any event, these efforts are in the main reactive, short-lived and place the entire onus for rights protection on the sporting organisation.
  
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  For example, after a lengthy rights enforcement procedure by MLB Advanced Media (the internet and interactive media company of Major League Baseball), one of the main P2P-based streaming services (SopCast) banned all streams for that league. However, users re-broadcasting that league and the viewers of those streams simply shifted to different P2P services (e.g., TVAnts). Unauthorised transmissions of MLB content have increased by 25% from the 2007 season to the 2008 season.
  
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  Where possible, legal action against individual sites and facilitators has been taken by some sports organisations but the process is time-consuming, expensive and, in some cases, ultimately ineffective. Sites closed in one country can change to new hosts in new countries in under a day.
  
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  For example, an attempt by Cricket Australia to close a site re-broadcasting a range of live sporting events including cricket has been frustrated by the ability of the site to continually switch hosting providers (often to countries with more permissive copyright laws) and by those running it to protect their identities and locations well enough to evade all but the most forthright efforts by broadcasts, the authorities, and the judiciary. The site remains online despite judicial orders prohibiting its further operation.
  
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  There are some technical methods which may possibly provide help to manage some aspects of sporting piracy but do not and cannot provide a full answer.
  
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  The NBA have entered into agreements with two of the largest P2P streaming services in China to offer legitimate streams of live NBA games. Although these partnerships may have resulted in a decrease in the number of average viewers for unauthorized streams, this arrangement has by no means eliminated or solved the issue of NBA content piracy in China, and has not addressed the piracy of their games elsewhere. Further, current rights agreements mean that it may not even be possible for other sports to explore similar partnerships. As a result this business model still remains unproven.
  

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  Over nine cricket events between 2005 and April 2008, 941 individual sites were found to provide unauthorised streams, embed the video from those streams, or provide a link to the streams.
  
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  The number of P2P-based streams for unauthorised re-transmissions of cricket events has increased at the expense of streams requiring payment for access. Free hosting sites such as Blogspot are also increasingly in use for embedded streams for cricket.
  
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  SopCast is responsible for 60% of P2P-based live cricket streams.
  
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  The market for broadcast rights for cricket in the United States has been severely affected by the wide availability of unauthorised live streams. One of the two primary legitimate providers of cricket broadcasts in the country is now disinclined to bid for rights, leaving a monopolistic and uncompetitive market which will have an effect on the revenues available worldwide to cricket development.
  

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  Across four popular European football leagues, an average of 91 infringing sites were found for each league. 177 individual sites were located which provided unauthorised streams of Premier League matches.
  
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  The majority of infringing sites (over 95% of sites for three of the leagues) were connected to P2P-based streaming infringements. 37% of Premier League infringements from the 2007-08 season were from unicast-based re-transmissions.
  
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  Monitoring of a Premier League game from April 2008 indicated an audience of 238,000 viewers. Of a sample of these viewers, 49% were located in China with a further 13% in the UK.
  
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  During the 2007-2008 season, 85 sites with infringements were located for the Bundesliga with the vast majority P2P-based infringements.
  
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  49 sites were located with infringements for La Liga over a single weekend in April 2008. Over the same weekend, 53 sites were located with infringements for Serie A. The audience for a Serie A game during that weekend measured 169,000 viewers with 45% of a sample of viewers located in China and 17% in Italy.
  
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  Monitoring post-event downloads of two Champions League matches on the bittorrent peer to peer network showed close to 13,000 individual downloads for the most popular match. One-third of downloaders were in either France, the United States, or the United Kingdom.
  

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  NBA content is extremely popular in China. Almost 80% of viewers of unauthorised streams of NBA games are located in China.
  
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  Over the last two seasons, 172 sites providing unauthorised streams of NBA games have been located online, with 74% related to P2P streaming. The SopCast service is responsible for over 60% of streams.
  
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  Over one million viewers were recorded on an unauthorised SopCast stream of an NBA game in December 2007.
  
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  The NBA has entered into partnerships with PPLive and PPStream to provide legitimate streams of NBA games in China. Although monitoring shows that the average number of viewers for unauthorised NBA streams has declined since these partnerships were established, the number of NBA games being streamed without authorisation has remained the same. Indeed, a large number of illegitimate streaming sites still exist (even in China) and the NBA, together with other sports organisations, still faces major problems from digital piracy in the country.
  

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  All other sporting organisations participating in this report have experienced live streaming piracy at one level or another.
  
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  MLB games are frequently pirated online. MLB documented more than 3,200 unauthorised live broadcasts in 2007. During the 2008 season, incidents have increased by more than 25%.
  
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  After vigorous rights enforcement, the SopCast service banned streams of MLB games. However, the centre of unauthorised P2P streams has now shifted to the TVAnts service.
  
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  Monitoring of three grand slam tennis tournaments located 129 sites over seven grand slam events since the start of 2006. However, the situation appears to be becoming worse for tennis: 59 sites were located for the last grand slam event monitored compared to just 70 such sites for all six tournaments before this.
  
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  Australian Rules Football has had a particular problem with downloads of their games on bittorrent and have had some success closing a small number of Australian sites. Other bittorrent sites remain online and offer a large number of AFL games.
  
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  Across three major rugby events during 2007 and 2008, 70 sites were located which concerned unauthorised live streaming with 75% P2P-based.
  
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  For the 2007 Formula One season, 79 infringing sites were located. Of four monitored raced, an audience of over 150,000 was recorded for the most popular.
  
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  Comprehensive coverage of major athletics events can be found on live streaming services.
  
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  Golf tournaments are regularly streamed live through unauthorised means on the internet.
  
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  Almost all televised games from the National Football League can be located on live streaming services. Streams are popular with the large pockets of NFL fans outside the United States but also with US viewers who can use such streams get around blackout restrictions in their local markets.
  
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  Horseracing can also be found through live streaming services, often provided by legitimate betting services. There are concerns that the availability of unauthorised live streams increases unlawful betting activity.
  

Envisional | NetResult