The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has announced the shutdown of a notorious live sports piracy ring based in Vietnam and viewed extensively throughout the world.
Combined, the operation’s illicit sites logged 812 million visits over the past 12 months, making it one of the largest sports piracy rings in the world, and the largest sports piracy ring taken down by ACE to date. The shuttered sites include notorious sports piracy targets such as bestsolaris[dot]com, streameast[dot]to; markkystreams[dot]com; crackstreams[dot]dev; and weakspell[dot]to.
Through an intensive, global investigation, ACE identified and approached the sites’ Hanoi-based operators, who agreed to immediately transfer 138 domains to ACE.
“The shutdown of this globally notorious live sports piracy ring is a huge victory in our campaign against the piracy of live sports programs and follows other recent successful actions by ACE and law enforcement in Vietnam,” said Larissa Knapp, Executive Vice President and Chief Content Protection Officer for the Motion Picture Association (MPA). “ACE’s live sports members face a unique threat when it comes to digital piracy, as live sports broadcasts lose substantial commercial value once the game ends. The takedown serves as a warning to piracy operators everywhere – including operators in live sports piracy – that ACE will identify and shut down their illegal operations.”
Primarily targeting audiences in the US and Canada, the sites streamed sports events daily, including content from all the US sports leagues and global leagues of every category. The illicit operation affected all ACE members, including ACE’s sports tier members beIN Sports, Canal+ and DAZN.
“DAZN stands with ACE in the fight to eradicate piracy, which undermines the sports ecosystem at all levels,” said Ed McCarthy, Chief Operating Officer of DAZN. “It is very pleasing that a criminal operation of this scale was taken down. Piracy often compromises the security of fans’ data, which is then used for illegal purposes, so the closure of this piracy ring has the added benefit that potential subscribers will be guided toward legitimate content providers like DAZN.”
In a related development a Swansea bar was fined for illegally screening Sky Sports. On Tuesday, 17 December 2024, Ms. Elspeth Lerwell, the Licensee, and Mr. Richard Hole, the Sole Director of the Fairfield Social Club in Swansea, Wales, were found guilty in their absence of four offences related to the dishonest broadcast of Sky televised programming.
In this case, both Lerwell and Hole televised Sky Sports football matches with the intent to avoid payment of the applicable commercial subscription charge. Sky Sports content is only available to licensed premises in the UK via a commercial viewing agreement from Sky Business.
Ms Lerwell and Mr. Hole were ordered to pay a total of £3800 (£1,900 each) in fines and costs.
FACT brought the criminal prosecution at Swansea Magistrates’ Court against the licensee and sole director, for showing Sky Sports to customers without having valid commercial viewing agreements in place. Business premises that show Sky broadcasts without a commercial viewing agreement risk similar action, or potential civil legal action.
