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Pirated streaming of sports and premium TV is costing broadcasters and sports bodies billions of dollars a year, constituting “industrial scale theft of video services”, according to media analysts at Enders.
Enders found that pirated feeds account for a “double digit percentage” of all viewing of premium sports and television, based on private data from broadcasters and analysis of internet data, though it was unable to put an exact figure on the scale of the problem.
Sky and DAZN are among the companies that have warned of soaring rates of TV piracy in the UK and Europe, which executives say is undermining their ability to buy expensive rights to show sports such as Premier League football.
A single pirated stream of a high-profile event, particularly a live football match, can attract “tens of thousands” of people, according to Enders, which on Friday will release a report analysing data from European TV groups. It found that this number may be multiplied many times when these streams are shared on social media.
Once stolen, live feeds are used globally and outside the areas covered by the licences to show the games, “leaking subscribers and impacting revenues to rights owners and sports leagues beyond the original provider”, it said.
The group concluded that “industrial scale theft of video services, especially live sport, is in the ascendance”, with “combating piracy a formidable challenge, providing a direct threat to profitability for broadcasters and streamers”.
The topic of piracy is expected to be a major focus at a conference organised next week by Enders and Deloitte in London, which will feature executives from Sky, Warner and other TV services.
Media analyst Claire Enders said that “piracy is costing content originators, pay-TV and streaming companies, many billions globally”.
Media groups are using their own “war rooms” for live events, using a combination of techniques to take down live pirated services as they happen. But such efforts are impeded by a lack of proactive work by tech companies to combat the problem, Enders found.
Nick Herm, Sky’s chief operating officer, said the report “highlights the significant scale and impact of piracy”. He added: “We’d like to see faster, more joined-up action from major tech platforms and government to address the problem and help protect the UK creative industries.”
Enders said a complete overhaul of the technology architecture licensing was needed. Its report accused Big Tech groups of a “combination of ambivalence and inertia, failing to engage decisively with content owners to shore up security architecture, while simultaneously steering consumers to illegal services in the other parts of their businesses”.
The problem has been exacerbated by the widespread use of Amazon’s Firestick, an internet TV device that can be plugged into a TV with pirate feeds alongside legitimate services such as Netflix, Prime Video and BBC iPlayer.
According to 2025 data provided by Sky cited by Enders, 59 per cent of people in the UK who said they had used pirated feeds in the past 12 months using a physical device said they used an Amazon Fire device.
Amazon has said it has prohibited the sale of illicit streaming devices in its marketplace as well as on apps that infringed the rights of third parties, with “on-device warnings informing customers of the risks associated with installing or using apps from unknown sources”.
