A new report by Enders Analysis has said industrial theft of live sports broadcasts is providing a direct threat to profitability for broadcasters and streamers.
‘Video piracy: Big tech is clearly unwilling to address the problem’ concludes that DRM systems provided by Microsoft and Google for 20 years are now in steep decline.
“Big tech is both friend and foe in solving the piracy problem. Conflicting incentives harm consumer safety by providing easy discovery of illegal pirated services, and reduced friction through low-cost hardware such as the Amazon Firestick,” says Enders.
According to 2025 data provided by Sky quoted by Enders to the Financial Times, 59% of people in the UK who claimed to have used pirated feeds in the past 12 months using a physical device said they did so through an Amazon Fire device.
In February, Cloudflare launched a legal action against LaLiga over IP blocking action that it said blocked millions of users from accessing unrelated websites.
The report accuses Big Tech groups of a “combination of ambivalence and inertia” in failing to engage decisively with the content owners to bolster their security, while steering consumers to illegal services enabled by other parts of their business.
The company’s research found that illegal streams are responsible for “double digit percentage” of premium TV broadcasts.
Executives at Sky and DAZN are among those who have warned that the soaring rates of piracy are undermining their ability to buy the rights to show high ticker events such as Premier League football.
