The last decade has seen a spike in sport viewing, particularly during and following the Covid-19 lockdown. This trend, unfortunately, is accompanied by the burgeoning live sports piracy and the astounding rise of unauthorized streaming services. The situation has not gotten any better, despite the incessant efforts of sports rights holders and broadcasters!
Over half of the world's sports fans admit to watching pirated streams, with a notable 16% exclusively relying on unauthorized sources for live sports viewing.
Recently, the NFL, NBA and UFC have jointly stated that live piracy costs the world's sports industry up to $28 billion in potential annual income due to the escalating threat of piracy.
Meanwhile, one of the most popular football tournaments, the UEFA Champions League (UCL), faces around 50% of its online viewers accessing matches through illegal streams. Similarly, the English Premier League loses roughly £1 million per match and Formula 1 racing, around $45 million per race weekend.
Sports streaming piracy is significantly impacting the revenue from broadcast rights deals and official streaming services, not to mention sponsorship deals, subscription fees and advertising revenue.
One of the primary ways AI is utilized is through Machine Learning (ML), monitoring and analyzing vast amounts of data acquired from the internet. By continuously learning from new data, ML detects piracy patterns with high accuracy, such as unusual end-user behavior in digital rights management protocol traffic or the use of known piracy-related keywords and URLs.
An example of AI fighting piracy is a new ‘AI ranking algorithm’ that helps piracy analysts identify the most-likely-to-succeed targets for action and takedown notices, ensuring that the most egregious violations are addressed promptly.
Speed is essential because live sports are high-stakes, real-time events. It’s, therefore, imperative to have real-time detection and response systems in place to quickly address illegal streams before they spread throughout the internet.
Accuracy is equally essential. Advanced forensic watermarking and content recognition plays a vital role in precisely identifying infringing content without causing viewer interruption.
Demonstrating an efficient anti-piracy strategy is critical to securing partnership relationships with advertisers and sports leagues, ensuring value for both parties.
Piracy services are increasingly successful in presenting themselves as legitimate businesses, using well-known payment provider services. A cross-industry strategy is therefore a necessity.
The return on investment in technologies that address payment disruption is quite clear. By cutting pirates off from legitimate payment supply-chain platforms, it becomes increasingly difficult for potential customers to subscribe.
The global problem of live sports piracy necessitates a multifaceted strategy. In addition to cutting-edge technology, successful anti-piracy tactics also require intelligence sharing, joint operations and a strong, trusted network across multiple industries.
That is what we can offer at Irdeto! Contact us to learn more!
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