A (0:02)

Millions of players, one world no lag. How's it done? AWS is how epic games turn to AWS to scale to more than 100 million Fortnite players worldwide so they can stay locked in with battle tested reliability. AWS is how leading businesses power next level innovation. Studies show that 100% of everybody in the world wants to curl up indoors and do nothing because it's so darn cold out there. That's why many people are turning to Bombas, whose pillowy plush slippers and warm merino wool socks have been said to be the most comfortable in the history of feet. Bomba's products have been found to boost coziness by up to 1 million percent. Okay, enough fake statistics, but could Bomba socks and slippers really be the Cure? Go to bombas.com audio and use code audio for 20% off your first purchase. That's B O-M-B-A-.com and use code Audio the next evolution in football Storytelling Football Manager is back in our lives. For the first time, Football Manager 26 refreshes the managerial experience and sets the stage for you to define your football destiny. Now, chances are that as a listener to this podcast, you've spent hundreds or even thousands of hours on previous iterations of this game. Tommy Svendel laughs and Czerno Samba and are much better in the game than in real life. Toribo west, we salute you. Well, FM26 is going to give you the richest matchday experience ever with enhanced player movement and greater on pitch detail, bringing new levels of depth and drama to every match. For the first time, you can compete at the pinnacle of English football as the Premier League debuts. With fully licensed club badges, kits and official player photos, and with a completely overhauled UI by the genius developers at Sports Interactive, every aspect, from training to tactics to transfers belongs to you and your vision. Football Manager 26 is out now across platforms. Step into the dugout and change the game. The Athletic FC how do you watch your Premier League football at home? Yeah, kind of streaming services, sort of streaming services. Cheap streaming services. However much some might struggle to say the actual word, the culture of illegal streaming is alive and kicking. So if there are better services available elsewhere, then consumers are going to move in that direction. It's hitting the leagues and the broadcasters hard. There's a big group of people fighting piracy across the region while criminals make hay while the sun shines. It was complex because of the monies that they were making and the concept of how they work together and it presents a crisis for Football. Sports piracy poses an existential threat. I'm Adam Leventhal, senior writer and broadcaster from the Athletic, and for the last six months I've been looking into the underground world of illegal streaming. The culture, the crime and the crisis. So do you think that's more and more common nowadays? No one my age is paying 80 plus to watch football. I think the fragmentation makes people stream illegally way more. I'd rather pay $10 a month for an IPTV service just to catch all the games. Illegal streaming is a complex issue. Someone described it to me as being like an onion with layer after layer if you're not familiar with it. Illegal streaming or piracy means the online consumption of games without the copyright owner's permission or via a modified TV box or stick device that you plug into your tv, watching via an app or an unauthorized website. If those options sound familiar to you, you're not alone. You can't get to all the games. So we, yeah, we stream where we. Where we need to watch it on sky when I can, because we got a skybox at home. But like, when games aren't available on sky, obviously you go through different means like fire sticks and stuff like that to watch it. Watch it that way because it's a lot cheaper. If I'm not down the pub, then I'll be using a fire stick or a website to watch it is so much cheaper than trying to pay for a Sky subscription where you're paying, what, you know, 500 quid a year or you can pay 60 quid for the year. I can tell which one is easier to, you know, justify as such. I wash it on a fire stick. Modified fire stick, yeah. How much do you pay a year? 80 quid. Is that all? Yeah. And do you think that that's. I mean, how old are you? 23. So do you think that's more and more common nowadays, that that's just almost par for the course that people are doing this? Yeah. I know at work at at least five to 10 people that probably do it as well because it's just too expensive to do it the normal way, to be honest. I use a VPN to change my country that I'm watching football from, and then from there I log into a legal site in that country to watch the football for zero or a lot less. Pennies can't watch three o' clock games on the telly and I can't afford to go and watch them all in the stadium because the price is too much and I can't afford every single streaming site there is because it's hundreds of pounds a month. So you watch the three o' clock anywhere you come. Well, that was a host of England football fans here at Wembley, the historic home of football ahead of the international against Wales. Cost, convenience and not wanting to comply Some of the reasons given behind illegal streaming to watch Premier League football legally isn't cheap or particularly easy. In the uk you need sky or TNT Sports to watch them all. On average that costs 40 to 80 pounds per month. But there are cheaper options like Now TV for example. In the States, games are on USA Network, NBC, CNBC and Peacock. You can pay anything from $10.99 to $60 a month, depending on how much you want. We'll look at the role of the 3pm blackout, VPNs and generational consumer expectations later on, but let's give you some hard data on the amount of people that have moved away from legal viewing options. So the Athletic commissioned an exclusive poll from market research company YouGov Sport. We wanted to see how many people had watched an illegal stream over the last six months. The results found that 9% of UK adults had watched sport, predominantly football, illegally since March 2025. That's 4.7 million people or or Wembley filled to its 90,000 seater capacity 52 times another 9%. So another 4.7 million people said they weren't sure or preferred not to say. And remember, this is only people over 18. The top three methods people used were websites, firesticks and other IPTV devices, and social media streams. It's important to point out here that although fire sticks have an association with Amazon, it's become a catch all term to include all sorts of devices and brands. And on their own these devices aren't illegal, it's the software loaded onto them that causes the problem. Now we'll have More on that YouGov research later on, especially when it comes to what people worry about, if they do at all. But the problem appears to be even more acute elsewhere in the world. Global consultants Brand Finance and found that 44% of 12,000 respondents across six continents said they'd considered watching football on unofficial streams last year. With people in Saudi Arabia, China and India top of the list. It's a huge problem. Sports piracy poses an existential threat. That's Larissa Knapp, former high ranking FBI agent, now Executive Vice President and Chief Content Protection Officer of the Motion Picture association who've waged a decades long war against piracy. Obviously for the studios the existential threat is a pre release copy that gets out on the Internet, a live sports broadcast loses all commercial value. Once the game is done right, the score is out there, everybody knows the outcome. So that is an even harder space to work in. They estimate losses of over 28 billion right, in potential revenue that sports loses every year. It's why the Premier League, the most watched and lucrative, making 4 billion pounds a year, takes it so seriously. They can't eradicate it, only disrupt it. The Singapore office is principally but not exclusively about piracy. That's Premier League CEO Richard Masters speaking at the Leaders Sports Conference in October. The Premier League has a substantial commitment to only social broadcasters, that we will protect your rights, the rights that you have purchased so you can get the best possible return on your investment. So there's a big group of people fighting piracy across the region. Last season, the Premier League, via court sanctioned blocking orders, shut down around 600,000 illegal streams. Sky Sports, the main broadcaster in the UK, showing 215 of the 380 top tier games, call piracy a serious threat. They say they invest heavily to protect the value of their content, using advanced tech, including AI to disrupt networks. Piracy is a very serious issue. It's certainly significant. That's Sky's chief sports officer Jonathan Licht speaking at a season launch event in August. There's a real concern that despite the illegality and the links to organised crime, that it's been normalized in a way and I think that's dangerous for everyone, that's dangerous for the industry. He's right about it being normalized. It's easy to engage with illegal streaming nowadays. With just a few messages, codes and clicks, you can be up and running in a matter of minutes. Okay. I'm in my office at home and I've been told by a contact that I should go to Facebook Marketplace and search for fire sticks. So in front of me I've got pages full of pictures of fire sticks and they've all got WhatsApp numbers to contact. It's very open and to be honest, it's quite surprising that you're able to just use a mainstream platform like this just to get in touch with people who are supplying something that is clearly illegal. But I've also been told that sellers get around the algorithm by being clever with the keywords. We will get Facebook's response on this later on, but let's just pick one of the numbers at random and give it a go. Right, so I've asked what channels I can get with this one offering and this is the reply. All sports channels, they say and it works on all devices. Okay, let's ask how much it's going to cost. They're typing. Here we go. £30 for three months, £40 for six months or £65 for a year. Right, let's ask what I need to do. Now. They've asked if I've already got a fire stick, which I'll say I do. So they say download the downloader app onto my device and then enter a six digit code which has just come through. But I'm going to stop there later with further investigation. You'll find out more about the people trying to sell me that service and why I didn't want to put any unauthorized app on my device. Instead, I've just arrived at someone's house that I know on this Saturday afternoon who already has an illegal streaming service. Now, before I go in, we need to speak about the 3pm blackout, which is another factor in this whole debate. Football. Millions play it, millions more follow it, and those who win are heroes to the world. The Saturday 3pm Blackout Blocks games being shown in the UK between 2:45 and 5:15pm it was first thought up in the 60s by Burnley chairman Bob Lord, who wanted to protect the sanctity of people going to games rather than watching on TV. It wasn't needed until the mid-80s in the UK, but it's still a regular bone of contention. There are no more games outside of 3pm that aren't being broadcast. That's Premier League CEO Richard Masters again. But we're committed to it, certainly for the foreseeable future. It's not a decision that we make. It's done in conjunction with other football bodies, the AFL and the fa, and we're committed to it for the foreseeable future. The blackout has done two main things. It means that anyone who wants to watch three o' clock kickoffs on Saturday in the UK has to be at the game or watch on a pirate stream outside the UK. There's no blackout. Here's a quick audio postcard. 3, 2, 1, go. I am on holiday. It's August and the sun is shining here in France and I'm just popping inside, moving away from the the pool because I wanted to check in on the second round of Premier League matches. And it is just past 4 o' clock here in France, just past 3 o' clock in England, and there on the screen in front of me via Canal Plus, I can watch all of the 3pm kickoffs back in England, right here, right now, ones that you can't watch live in England, so the TV feeds supplied to overseas broadcasters are pirated and consumed by people in the UK and around the world. Meanwhile, the Premier League and broadcast partners have systematically moved games away from 3pm on Saturday so various other slots can be commercially exploited. When the Premier league started in 92, 93, 66% of games were Saturday 3PMs last season it was down to just 33%. Even the UK's future King Prince William said recently he finds it irritating when he can't watch aston villa at 3pm on Saturday. UEFA's Article 48 governs the blackout rule now. It says at least 50% of games in the top two divisions have to be Saturday 3pm for it to apply. Well, since the start of last season that threshold hasn't been met 11 times, but it stayed in place. It stays because it's baked into broadcast agreements with sky and tnt, and although there can be seasonal exemptions, it's unlikely to see significant change until the rights come up for grabs again in 2029. Non League Hartlepool supporting presenter Jeff Stelling may rant like this on Talksport if Grimsby are playing Morecambe Saturday afternoon is cold, wet and miserable and Manchester United against the Manchester city is on TV live at 3 o'. Clock. How many people are going to go to Grimsby against Morecambe? I can tell you how many. A big fat zero. And that will be the end of clubs at a lower level. But in that exclusive research carried out for the Athletic by YouGov Sport, there's a different view. 57% of football fans opposed the blackout in 2025. Only 26% supported it, with the rest neutral or not? Sure. Now 42% of match going fans say they're more likely to attend games in person because of the blackout, which does feed into Sterling's concerns. But this next result is just as powerful. 77% of football fans would be interested in watching 3pm Kickoffs live on TV. I'm Tom Greatrex, I'm chair of the Football Supporters Association. It is a difficult issue, but the FSA on behalf of match going supporters has long had a position that the 3pm blackout is justified because of ensuring that clubs and teams and leagues further down the pyramid are not disadvantaged by TV broadcasts happening at a time when they're most likely to be playing. But it is also the case that many fans are starting to adjust their views, particularly fans of larger clubs who may find it difficult to be able to get to games themselves. But it doesn't mean that it's A very straightforward issue in the way it might have been in the past. Now, I mentioned that technically the blackout could have been lifted a number of times recently, but it wasn't. It included the day I went to watch the action on an illegal stream. Back to the here and now. Saturday, October 4th. Let's just head in to this person's house who has the illegal streaming device. There's some big games kicking off very shortly and I've kindly been given the keys. So let's go in and if I click it on, it comes up with Sky Glass, although we know that that's not the. The real thing. There's a menu for live sports and both Arsenal and Manchester United are playing. And there you go, stepping in to try and clear that one away. Has it done so effectively, though? And then I can just switch it over and watch Manchester United against Sunderland. And they're two games that, without an illegal streaming device just like this, I wouldn't be able to watch in the UK. I've been watching for about 10 minutes or so now, and across both games, the picture quality isn't great at times, and judging by some of the graphics that have been popping up on the screen, you can tell that they're coming from a. A variety of different sources from different countries as well. Now, the person whose subscription this is pays £50 for the year direct into someone's bank account. We'll have more on that later on, but that gives him all of the games and the competitions. Now, he didn't want to be identified by doing an interview. That's why he's let me into the house by myself. So this is an actor's voice on why he chooses to have an illegal streaming device. It's down to cost, not having to pay multiple subscriptions and the availability of matches. I don't associate this with larger criminal activity. Identity theft is more of a concern. Sure, but, you know, someone has your details, you just don't weigh up, but don't really think about the criminal side all that much. So, as a consumer of an illegal stream, are you committing a crime? Yes, they are. That's Kieran Sharp from the Federation Against Copyright Theft, also known as Fact. It's been established that they're committing crimes under the Fraud act and it's something that we do as well. Put the message out there, because we'd rather people stopped and we don't want to go down the route of prosecuting them. They are committing a criminal offence. They could get swept up in some of our investigations and it's not something they should be blase about. The bigger focus is on the suppliers of the streams. In the US the Protecting Lawful Streaming act passed in 2020 in the UK meanwh some of the cases we use conspiracy to defraud because there is a clear conspiracy between a number of people and that's something that's very easy for a jury to understand in a court. For instance. In other cases we use the Copyrights, Designs and Patents act because there's copyright offenses and they're the ones that usually underpin the other offenses. But there's a whole raft of legislation that we can use. In 2023, an illegal streaming service called Flawless found out exactly what punishments were possible. Over five years they'd amassed £7 million in profits via their 50,000 subscribers. But after a long term investigation, ringleader Mark Gould was convicted of fraud and contempt of court and sentenced to 11 years in prison. In total, five men working on the service were jailed for 30 years. Fact worked in collaboration with the Premier League and various police forces across the country on the case. Yeah, it was probably the, probably the biggest we've done, which is something we didn't always see right from the start. It became apparent as we investigated it and it became exceedingly complex as a result. So it was complex because of the numbers of people involved, it was complex because of the manifestation of the service and the amount of time it spent to ensure that we could turn the computer forensics into evidence. It was complex because of the monies that they were making and the concept of how they worked together as individuals working together in a conspiracy. So it was a major case, groundbreaking case as you can see from the impact on their lives, what happened to them in prison. Now hidden away at Facts HQ is the forensics room. A treasure trove of evidence that's been gathered over the years. We've had to disguise one of the key investigators voice to avoid him being identified and can't name him. He analyzes all of of the items seized. So we've got shelves and shelves with evidence from various cases, a variety of computers, laptops, chat logs, images, spreadsheets, documents etc. Recovering deleted files. We also capture evidence from the fire sticks or illicit set top boxes video capturing the content so that that can be displayed to a judge and jury in court showing that I was able to access Premier League content or a 3 PO football match and so on and so forth. Still to come, we'll analyze whether a more equitable future is possible where streaming illegally doesn't feel like the only option. Do the new generation of consumers believe that content should be paid for? Next I'll find out how easy it is for the piracy market to grow and they share that key with everyone else so that everyone else can go into to your house. There's shocking information about what illegal streamers could be doing with your data. You're giving them access into your home network and you're good with that. Plus we go behind the scenes of that big Stream east sting in Egypt. Majority of the traffic going to that service came from the us, from Canada, UK As a small business owner, you don't have the luxury of clocking out early. Your business is on your mind 247 so when you're hiring, you need a partner that grinds just as hard as you do. That hiring partner is LinkedIn jobs when you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes it easy to post your job for free, share it with your network, and get qualified candidates that can manage all in one place. Here's how it works. Post your job LinkedIn's new feature can help you write job descriptions and then quickly get your job in front of the right people with deep candidate insights. Either post your job for free or pay to promote promoter jobs. Get three times more qualified applicants get qualified candidates at the end of the day, the most important thing to your small business is the quality of candidates. And with LinkedIn you can feel confident that you're getting the best. Based on LinkedIn data, 72% of SMBs using LinkedIn say that LinkedIn helps them find high quality candidates. You can let your network know you're hiring. You can even add a hiring frame to your profile Picture and get two times more qualified candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring today. Find your next great hire on LinkedIn. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.combaseballshow that's LinkedIn.combaseballshow to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. This episode of the Athletic FC is brought to you by Ruler. There's no doubt that this is a tough time of year. It's colder, the nights are longer, and family and work commitments never get any easier. Taking care of your mental health at this time, Indeed, anytime is so, so important. But finding a therapist can be frustrating, expensive and time consuming. That's where Ruler comes in. Ruler makes therapy simple, affordable and fast. They work with most major insurance plans and the average session copay is just $15. Getting started couldn't be easier. You answer a few quick questions about the what matters to you and Ruler connects you to one of their licensed therapists or psychiatrists based upon your needs, preferences and goals. You could be talking to a therapist as soon as the next day with no weeks of waiting, no endless back and forth. And whether it's therapy or medication management, Ruler makes it simple to get the full scope of care you need without having to navigate between platforms or offices. Thousands of people have already used Ruler to finally get the care they needed, so don't keep putting it off. Go to rula.com athletic and get started today. That's ruler R U L A.com athletic take the first step, get connected and take control of your mental health one last time. Ruler.com Athletic Millions of players, one world, no lag. How's it done? AWS is how epic games turn to AWS to scale to more than 100 million Fortnite players worldwide so they can stay locked in with battle tested reliability. AWS is how leading businesses power next level innovation. Just to let you know that this part includes references to child abuse this is the underground world of illegal streaming, A special episode of the Athletic FC podcast. So we know about the culture. What about the crimes that underpin the piracy industry? I was out for pizza with a friend whilst doing this investigation and he asked how do the pirates get the feed in the first place? Well, to avoid going down a tetra rabbit hole of coding torrents and leeching, illegal streamers commonly choose one of four slices of piracy pizza, hacking legitimate streams, scraping the web for live streams and redistributing them, setting up their own streaming servers, or getting access to a corrupt industry insider. Imagine that your house has one lock and they clone your key to open the lock and they share that key with everyone else so that everyone else can go into your house. That is what the pirates do. That's Valentine Seabrans from video tech company Unified Streaming. And in order to prevent that, there are several ways to do that. But it's hard because it's complicated and you need to invest in it to prevent pirates to steal your content or go into your house. That's what we try to do. It's a whack a mole game. So that means you can prevent the current hacks and then at some point something else will pop up and then it's an active game. It's not something you can just throw money at and it's done. Tomorrow there's something else and then it's leaky again. Now piracy has been around for centuries from the high seas, when people used the Latin word pirata, which means one who attacks, to the 17th century, when people feared the impact of the printing press. In the early 2000s, when Sweden's pirate Bay started sharing music and films, their justification was anti capitalist and pro freedom of expression. I spoke to an ex pirate who operated back then, speaking anonymously to protect his safety. And he's uncomfortable about paid for piracy services. None of us like them, he said. One pirate not liking another is a bit like that pointing Spider man meme. But my source feels a Robin Hood spirit back then has been replaced by people being hoodwinked by criminals wanting to make money. A lot of consumers will see this as a victimless crime and sticking it to the man, basically. What's your take on that? Having come from prior law enforcement, I think it's amazing that folks still think that there is no consequence. And I can unpack this a little bit. That's Larissa Knapp again. The prior law enforcement she mentions was spending 28 years in the FBI before joining the Motion Picture Association. So we all take risks every day, right? Do we decide to speed, do we decide to drive without a seatbelt, do we decide to leave our doors and windows unlocked? And all of it seems to be seemingly innocuous. It doesn't really matter, right? Until you get into an accident. Using illegal apps is another one of those risks that consumers are taking. So you are loading a piece of software that in of its essence is illegal and owned by criminals, and you're putting it on your most trusted devices and you're connecting it to your network. So you're totally good with that. So you're willing to put something on your phone where you probably have your banking information, all of your personal contacts, photos, audio recordings, and you're okay with that to have this exist in the same ecosystem. Coming from the investigative standpoint, if we can get on somebody's phone somehow, it's very easy to escalate and move sideways, laterally into other applications on a system. So you're essentially giving a bad guy a backdoor into your most treasured object. And while you might think a fire stick is far removed, it's the same principle. You know, you're taking a dodgy box and you're putting it into your home network. Most people now have cameras in their house. Most people have other devices in their house that listen. That's a treasure trove of intelligence. We'll come back to Larissa later, but she mentioned photos and access to cameras. There two things relevant to a case that I looked into during the course of this investigation, which highlights the sinister motives of some pirates. During a raid of an illegal streaming gang, police discovered that one of the ringleaders possessed indecent images of children on his devices. He was also convicted of multiple offences of voyeurism, where someone observes or records someone doing a private act without their consent for the purposes of sexual gratification. He was jailed and given a 10 year sexual harm prevention order. In addition to being found guilty of piracy, sources working in this area also told me photos and videos harvested from devices sometimes doctored using AI and deepfake technology are sold on the Dark Web, a playground for criminals who can earn money from the data that they gather from you. Like when you pay for your illegal streaming service over WhatsApp and hand over your bank details. Crime Stoppers, an independent UK charity, say 5 million users experienced a virus, fraud or personal data theft as a result of watching illegal streams just last year. Even though I didn't go through with purchasing the illegal streaming service on WhatsApp earlier or handing over my bank details for obvious reasons, I did want to find out more about who I was swapping messages with. I handed over the WhatsApp number to anti piracy organization friend MTS. What came back was surprising. It just so happened they already had this person on their watch list and had started an investigation. By extracting his bank details they found that it was registered to a UK business that appeared to be a front to mask the illicit activity. The business was nothing to do with illegal streaming. It's why when they went through with the test purchase, he told them not to use any words related to illegal streaming in the reference. Using network forensics, they identified where he was streaming from and other associated businesses and one name kept cropping up. That kick started an on the ground covert surveillance operation that isolated the target to a UK property where they lived with a number of other people. The information has now been passed to the police for further investigation. It's why I've not been able to tell you everything I know, but as a result of looking into this case in particular, I wanted to find out about how the distribution pyramid works and whether it's easy to become a reseller. Okay, so I'm back in my office now and back on Facebook Marketplace where on one of the ads it offers the chance to become a reseller selling a product that is a knocked off version of Sky Glass with all the sports channels available, just like the one that I was watching earlier on. So let's get in touch. So first up I've said that I want to become a reseller and the reply is that I need credit. So he says that one credit gives the customer access to one month on the platform and 12 credits will cost me £20. He says I could charge customers anywhere up to £60 for a year long subscription, so make £40 profit. 100 credits will cost me £160. 200 would cost £300. So slightly better deal. One of his resellers he says sells 300amonth. Well, look, I'm not going to send any more messages. I'm not going to become an illegal streaming service seller. But I'll tell you about an alleged gang in a few moments time that make far more than just a few hundred pounds profit. Now we focused on the purchase and supply of illegal streaming services on Facebook. They say fraudulent activity not allowed and remove it when they can. But say reviewing millions of ads isn't without challenges and they invest in tech to tackle an industry wide issue. So to that gang I mentioned, at the start of November, just as we were putting the final touches on this investigation, I learned of a raid that took place in West Yorkshire in the uk. An intelligence led operation targeted one suspected reseller of IPTV services. He was identified by his bank account, traced and arrested. Police believe he was part of an organized crime group with three others, each with a network of resellers under them believed to be making hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. Search warrants were executed at four properties and four men arrested on suspicion of copyright and money laundering offenses. Devices were seized and reviewed by the high tech crime unit. A fifth suspect was also interviewed. All were released on bail pending further investigation. Illegal streaming makes a lot of money for criminal networks and much flows around the world in cryptocurrency. One investigator told me they frequently see Companies with $50 million worth of Bitcoin in accounts. Let's focus now on how one of those big operations was target. August 24th, 2025, on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital Cairo, not far from the pyramids, one of the most infamous illegal streaming sites, Stream east, was about to get hit. What is Stream East? It's not a single domain, it's not a single website. More than anything, it's a piracy brand. That's Danny Baksa, senior investigator for ace, the alliance for Creativity and Entertainment anti piracy Group. They represent 50 media brands including sports rights holders and football governing bodies like UEFA. He worked on the Streamez case. So our investigation started in the late of 2023 with one domain of focus that was brought to our attention by one of our sports rights holders, StreamEast app. The site went onto a watch list for the best part of a year. They monitored traffic trends and any IP changes. Now then we start getting to part two. What other domains are connected to that? There were loads. It was linked to 120 domains with a huge audience. We see that this ring that we have targeted is the largest by far by the number of viewers. The annual visits are north of 1 billion visits, arguably between 1.2 to 1.6. It was Egypt based but watched worldwide. Majority of the traffic going to that service came from the us, Canada, uk. This is meaningful, it generates a lot of traffic. It has been there for a while and it seems to be resistant to takedowns and such from rights holders. That's something that we usually suggest to us that it's a high priority target. The investigation escalated. Network mapping and the use of legal discovery tools to get information from legit platforms that might be providing its services led to a key breakthrough. Specifically in this case, I can tell you we had the first major clue that pointed out to Egypt with one of the IP addresses that we gotten back of the responses. Investigators then followed the money which surprise, surprise involved crypto movements went through that rabbit hole and that led to an offshore shell company that's being funneling the funds to two locations and companies, one in the Asia Pacific region and one in Dubai. And what we discovered, an Egyptian national heading these two different entities, they dug deeper into a web of diversified investments, real estate, gold bars, cash, other crypto forms. The pirates intention was to spread the funds in as many forms and locations to hide the income from the stream east revenues. But there's always a trail. The funds that were passing, they left a big fingerprint that part of the investigation unearthed a big chunk of income coming from adverts, those pop ups that pollute your eyeballs as you're trying to watch your match. It's often called malvertising in the industry because sites sell ad space to those who want to want you to click so they can harvest and sell on your data. It's a money spinner for illegal streamers. It's 6.2 million in in revenues that were flowing from the advertising company to the owners. It was a key breakthrough that allowed the case to be handed to Egyptian authorities. It's not always easy to get buy in from overseas police, especially with different laws, but they were keen. And then as we see in this case, they schedule A raid. So in the operation, we had 22 officers spread in two locations. They seized all the potential devices, phones, some communications, server access, credit cards that were seized, some transactions. And the financial investigation still continues. Well, that dig into the money uncovered a further $3.6 million in ad revenue, taking the total to nearly $10 million, with $600,000 in cash and cryptocurrency, plus evidence of further real estate by the operation linked to the two suspects who were arrested. When the Athletic initially reported on the story 10 days after it happened, the reaction was instructive. It was a popular site. There was sadness. There was also defiance. One Reddit blog claiming to be from the original Stream east, who'd previously been targeted, said they were still up and open for business. So for the people that saw the story and said, well, no, my Stream east is still working, they may well be watching a StreamEast service, but the one that you took out was the biggest chunk of an illegal organization using that brand. Yeah, that's correct. So, as we said, this is a strong brand, meaning in the sense in the piracy world. And I always find it a bit funny to speak about brands and so on, because it's my terminology in the legitimate world and we're using it and so on. Let's get Larissa Knapp's take on it with the Motion Picture Association, a main contributor to ACE's efforts. It's really funny. And I was talking with my son the other day about this, and he was like, the article that I sent him, he's like, it reads like it's a different Stream East, Mom. And I was like, well, yeah, because Stream east, it's a brand that has become so common. And I analogize this to him. He's like, what do you mean by that? And I was like, okay, let me put a finer point. So when you say, hey, mom, my nose is runny, can you give me a Kleenex? Kleenex is a brand. What you actually mean is tissue. And this is streameast. So we had, you know, the prior Stream east, and then obviously a bunch more copycat sites came up. The more recent one, Stream east, that one the Egyptian authorities take down, and that was a copycat site. They are related by name. They might be related financially, but obviously investigation is ongoing. We don't rest on our laurels. I'm under no illusion that I've obliterated the Streamys brand off the face of the earth. You know, when we take one down, five more will come up or more, because folks have that brand recognition, we'll still get at it. If it reconstitutes in a different country, we'll follow the digital breadcrumb trails. So it was a battle won, but not the war. The Motion Picture association have a most wanted list with high priority targets for the future. They highlight China, India, Russia and Vietnam as notorious piracy jurisdictions. In fact, in various conversations with people in the industry, there's been mention of war rooms being set up to try and combat piracy as it was happening. It conjures up images of Churchill underground bunkers and pieces representing battalions being pushed around a map of the world. Typically, this will be a large scale sporting event. That's Mark Mulready from anti piracy company Edeto and a war room veteran. You've got to coordinate a lot of operational teams together. You've got a huge amount of information coming in from various sources. You're quite often monitoring multiple sources of pirated content and seeing what impact you're having as you're progressing through the live event via the various actions. That could be anything from watermarking, fingerprinting to remove the pirated content, to blocking to other disruptive measures. It's quite a dynamic kind of environment, as you could expect. A lot of people drinking a lot of coffee and really trying to make an impact just because of the temporal nature of sport. Right. The value is at its highest when it's live. So anything that you can do and seconds count can really make a huge difference in that war room environment. It also appears that it's a battle to get people to actually think before engaging in illegal streams. When YouGov Sport asked people whether they were concerned about data theft and cybercrime, two thirds said they weren't. In their eyes, the risk was worth taking. Next on the underground world of illegal streaming, let's use a footballing analogy. You're on one side, you've got the Pirates on the other. Who wins most matches? The Pirates. This is a very easy question. It's always the Pirates. So what does that mean for the future? So if there are better services available elsewhere, then consumers are going to move in that direction, even if that includes piracy. How much would you pay for a Premier League subscription that would give you all of the games no more than £20. I mean, it'd be an absolute brilliant idea. That's what I think it needs. 300 sensors, over a million data points per second. How does F1 update their fans with every stat in real time? AWS is how, from fastest laps to strategy calls, AWS puts fans in the pit. It's not just racing, it's data driven innovation at 200 miles per hour. AWS is how leading businesses power next level innovation. Did I talk too much? Can't I just let it go? Take a breath. You're not alone. Let's talk about what's going on. Counseling helps you sort through the noise with qualified professionals and online therapy makes it convenient. See if it's for you. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of online therapy and let life feel better. Hey, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now I don't know if you've heard, but Mint's Premium Wireless is $15 a month. But I'd like to offer one other perk. We have no stores. That means no small talk crazy weather we're having. No, it's not. It's just weather. It is an introvert's dream. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See mintmobile.com this is a special episode of the Athletic FC podcast, the Underground world of illegal Streaming. Now, just a quick shout to stay all the way until the end because I want your take on all of this. Well, this is the International Broadcasting Convention here in Amsterdam which brings together the global media, entertainment and tech communities, including all the big sports broadcasters and those that work alongside them, and leagues to combat piracy. How do you feel the environment is developing in terms of piracy? How big a problem is it in particular in sport and soccer? The whole industry needs to get together and try to figure out how to combat this issue because the issue is a major one. That's Olga Kornienko, who's co founder of a company called EasyDRM, which stands for Digital Rights Management, a key layer of the piracy onion that I was talking about earlier on, trying to help rights holders secure their content. It is the problem of the weakest link. If you have a weak phone out there that shares the content or is hacked and they are sharing a new movie or a specific game, then once that content is out there, it's out there. And it doesn't matter if 99% of the websites and services are protecting the content. If one is leaking, then it's affecting the whole industry. How big an issue then is illegal streaming and piracy? For the sports industry, it has become very acute and that has really been a position that's Developed mostly for the worse, I would say, really, over the last few years. That's Gareth Sutcliffe from Tech and Media researchers Enders Analysis. The consumer now is so much more nimble. Do you think that the industry needs to catch up rather than, you know, it's the consumers that are to blame? Well, I think that's a very fair point. There are better services available elsewhere and there is more innovation and there is more choice, then consumers are going to move in that direction, even if that includes piracy. Do you see a world in which the funding doesn't necessarily come from the consumer? You could absolutely have highly promoted content that is paid for by a premium sponsor that makes it freely available to all. And certainly there are partners out there who are experimenting with that. It is all a question of balance. But certainly I think that innovation is one of those things that is a great response to piracy, which is that it addresses the fact that people not only want access, but they may actually want something different because they are moving faster than, for example, broadcasters or content owners are moving themselves. That's for the future, which we'll discuss more later. But over the course of this investigation, we went on a journey with something we've already mentioned quite a lot. The Amazon Fire Stick, the current version of the Firestick, is problematic because it enables piracy. It's important to point out that's Gareth speaking in Amsterdam in September. It is also a broadly risky device for consumer safety in that it provides a very easy path for malware to enter into a home computing environment. There are issues related to the policies around developing apps for that device that Amazon took a certain position on and broadly got wrong. They made it an open computing device that just opened it up to a whole world of nefarious actors. Let's deal with Gareth's claims. First up, Amazon say pirated content violates their terms and they actively warn people about the harms on the malware issue. During the summer, Amazon began to block some of the illegal streaming apps that had been loaded onto devices. Why? Well, that's where it gets a little murky. Suggestions from multiple sources said that US law enforcement had made contact with top Amazon bosses because of a national security threat caused by malware emanating from the Asia Pacific region. Now, Amazon pushed back on that precise claim and say they don't comment directly on specific interactions with law enforcement. They did say they work with industry partners and relevant authorities to combat piracy, though. I asked them directly about four illegal streaming apps that had been disabled and they confirmed that they had. And I Quote, exhibited malicious behavior safeguarding our customers. Security is of the utmost importance, they said. And we regularly monitor for and take action against potentially harmful third party apps. Gareth also talked about the Firestick being an open computing device. It's long been a frustration of companies like sky and the Premier League that it was too easy for pirates to load illegal streaming apps onto the device. We believe technology should fade into the background. The screens, the speakers, the way one thing connects to another. It should all be invisible. But Amazon made changes in October. I am so excited to be here today to talk about where TV is going. That's Amazon's Vice president of Fire tv, Aiden Marcus. But you want a smarter experience for that. We're introducing the new Fire TV 4K Select. So it's a new model of the Amazon Firestick on a new operating system. And the athletic has been told of an expanded anti piracy effort. Amazon will now block pirating apps on all of their applications, new and old. And they've started in Germany and France and will roll out the policy globally. Amazon have worked closely with the alliance for Creativity and Entertainment collective that Larissa Nassau overseas. It's my obligation and my job to pull together the data to help these companies make informed decisions and something that we work with Amazon. You know, a lot of these companies have aggressive programs to prevent illegal content from being uploaded. But every time they close one one hole, another one pops up because the criminals get creative. And that's why intelligence sharing and partnerships are so critical. Right. Beyond simply the transaction all. So, you know, in terms of working with Amazon, 100%, we work with them 100%, we provide them the data and we're committed to helping them succeed in this space. As Larissa points out, pirates find workarounds and there are millions of old fire sticks still in circulation, so the issue will certainly not disappear overnight. Speaking of disappearing, remember this guy from earlier? I use a VPN to change my country that I'm watching football for. As promised, let's get stuck into VPNs virtual private networks, the helpful masking device for those that can't access what they want where they live. And so there is this very conflicted story around VPNs that really tell an unusual narrative in terms of what the benefit of a VPN is. Is the narrative that it is good for security for the end users, or is the narrative really about being able to access content in other markets? Well, circumnavigating geo restrictions using a VPN has its own name. Geopiracy is a concept where Consumers use tools like VPNs to circumvent the restrictions in place and access the same content that they want to watch, but for a lower price from a different country. That's James Clark from GeoComply. So the use of VPNs is very big. And from data that we see that we find around a third of all Internet users use a VPN at some point. Over half of them, 51% of them, use a VPN to access better entertainment content or different entertainment content that they otherwise wouldn't be able to access. But what's more scary for a consumer is not so much that their football match might be disrupted, it's about what are they giving up in return for accessing this free content. And we've done a lot of research into VPNs and particularly the free VPNs which most people favor because, because they're free. And James says, within the terms and conditions of some of them is something potentially worrying. In return for use of their service, you are agreeing to become part of their peer to peer network and share not only your IP address but also some of your bandwidth. And as the user, actually you've got no idea who could be using that because those IPs end up in the hands of literally anyone who's using the other end of that vpn. So if you, if the police were to do an investigation to find the source of this criminality, they could well end up finding an IP address that ties back to your home. I wanted to get the take of a VPN provider on the issue. So I approached NordVPN, who have partnership deals with Leeds and Sunderland and a few football podcasts as well, making a strategic decision to step into the industry. But they don't like VPNs being associated with Geopiracy. They say it muddies the policy debate, overstates the harm. And BL blaming VPNs for some users violations is like blaming the motorway for speeding. They say it's a market design problem, not a security tool problem. And point to the music industry's response to piracy, where peer to peer site Napster inspired a new era of Spotify and others. It's something I spoke to Tasso Grebel from software company Castlabs about. If you go back 30 years, everybody was just illegally downloading through Napster and other apps. Just music, right? And eventually companies like Spotify, Apple Music subscription services came with a reasonable price and with a much higher quality and with much less effort. And so I think there's absolutely a way to win people back and make them pay for legit services and then consume media through legitimate channels. How do you solve this issue? The challenge really is on both sides, on the one hand, on the technical side. So we do need to engage in this whack a mole game, figure out what bad actors do and how they are trying to steal content and then see that we close those loopholes and find workarounds for their workarounds effectively. But I think it's also something that is related to how consumers actually perceive the world and consume media today and actually pay for it. And I think maybe some of these business models also need to adjust what users actually expect from a worldwide market in that sense. So how can the Premier League and broadcasters innovate and move towards a more equitable model that has the potential to bring customers back from piracy? Premflix is often mentioned as an option. The Premier League going direct to consumer or D2C with their own streaming platform. They've already taken back control of the sale of their media rights from IMG from the end of this season with the birth of Premier League studios. Here's CEO Richard Masters at Leaders. Again, we're putting ourselves in the supply chain, the content supply chain, principally to serve our international broadcast partners and so that we have a stronger control over content addressing new audiences. We're entirely open and neutral as to what sort of media entities that we end up working with. And of course we do work with companies that have streaming entities within them now. TV in this country, Peacock abroad, we're stepping towards that optionality, but I don't think will ever be and this moment is not on the horizon where there'll be a switch on, switch off moment for the Premier League. It'll be a mixed economy over time and who knows when that moment will come. So if the Premier League were to go it alone with a direct to consumer platform, they'd have to replace broadcast revenue with subscriber revenue to compete with Pirates. It would need to be cheaper with more option and certainly Saturday 3pm's you would have thought as part of the bargain. Currently the Premier League generate 1.6 billion pounds a season from UK TV rights revenue. So let's concentrate on a hypothetical service just for a UK audience to make that money back, they'd need 5 million subscribers to pay £26 per month. 10 million subscribers would make it only 13 pounds per month. Funnily enough, although France's current Ligue 1 direct to consumer model is used as a cautionary tale of moving Away from traditional broadcast partnerships too soon. It does have an attractive price point and that's also £13 per month. Well, I've come here to the home of the current Premier League leaders and title challengers, Arsenal, to find out if. If in a hypothetical world, the Premier League had their own streaming platform, how much would Arsenal fans pay to watch all of the games, whatever the time? Personally, I'd say about £20. £20amonth to watch Arsenal content all the games, Never miss a match. That'd be fantastic. I don't think it stopped me coming to games either, because it's still quite a reasonable price, no more than 20 pound. Every streaming service is so expensive now you can see why people do stream it illegally, but obviously the easiest option is your pub. But then you're spending more and more money on drinks, food, etc. I mean, it'd be an absolute brilliant idea. That's what I think think it needs, do you know what I mean? To try and stop it. But you've got to make it worth it. I think the fragmentation makes people stream illegally way more for sure. I pay £15amonth. I'd say. Yeah. For every game. Yeah, happily, I'd pay 15 pound a month. Yeah. I don't think there is a price on it. I think people would pay whatever it was, if it was available. I think people would pay it. I think anything in the region of between sort of 1999-29 pounds 99 pence a month to watch not just as Arsenal fans, but just Premier League fans. Like we're Arsenal fans. We're also football fans fans as well. So you're naturally gonna gonna pay to watch that level of football if you, if you could. I still don't understand why that hasn't been a thing. £50? Yeah. You pay £50? Yeah. If you get out the three o' clock games. Because what everybody wants to see is a three o' clock games. If there was just a Netflix of Premier League Netflix, I think that is personally the way forward. I think everybody would pay for that, I really do. So that's just a snapshot view, but everyone welcomed it. The problem for the Premier League is it's not necessarily as simple as that. They know people would pay, but going it alone means they take on the expenses too. Studios, broadcast facilities, trucks and cables. Direct to consumer also means having a fully functioning customer service arm too. Now, the Premier League could offset some of these extra costs with the rising value of their overseas media rights, which went up 27%. But any significant change would Come with risk. Many clubs lean heavily on broadcast revenue for competitive wages and transfer fees. Some even borrow against the money they get from the league, some to try and win titles, others simply to survive. It's really difficult for the Premier League to experiment because it's such a risk. You know, how can they afford to step away from linear TV when it's so valuable? That's the former CEO of the Premier League, Rick Parry, now the chairman of the English football league, the EFL, which looks after the other 72 English Football League clubs. One of the things, of course, that we pioneered many years ago and it came to the fore during lockdown, was high follow and streaming. So we've actually been doing it very successfully. Parry's right away from the bright lights of the Premier League. The EFL have offered club specific streaming options since the start of the 2020, 201718 season via a product called iFollow. That includes Blackout games available to an international audience, which many simply access using a VPN. The EFL's long standing arrangement with sky has now also morphed into a mixed model. So we've got a blend on sky essentially of the full match coverage, paid in, abetted by streaming. So we should be a test bed for the Premier League in terms of what the new technologies will be, what the new opportunities will be. These are all the sorts of things we should be doing. It shouldn't be. Well, the EFL is going to go away and experiment. It should be. And if football is looking to the future, looking at new strategies. Hey, Adam, how is it? Yeah, very good. How are you? Good, good. Roger Mitchell was CEO at the Scottish Premier League on UEFA's exec committee, and now advises leagues on investment and rights strategies. He previously worked in the music industry when it was facing its own piracy crisis. In his book, Sports Perfect Storm, he warns against burying heads in the sand. It'll probably go down the same way. You start having some kind of legal reaction, trying to block it, trying to punish people. Whereas the real cause is more existential than that. There's a lot of complacency. You hear it all the time now, Adam, them. Oh, the big platforms have got to have sport. It's the only thing that matters. We are the only game in town. We are the differentiator. Happy days. So I think the industry looks at this in a narrow kind of basis of what's it really costing us? Can we afford it? And they're missing the point. The point is, is this a product that kids are willingly going to pay for? When they've got an option not to pay for it. Having been there and done it, Roger knows why. The decision makers don't necessarily want to make waves and cause financial instability. So it appears the piracy can is being kicked down the road for others to deal with in the future. But what if there was immediate change and the Premier League made their own platform and that meant a bit of risk for them and a squeeze on the clubs? The shock absorber is player wages. In the last 30 years, players remuneration has basically reflected the increase in media values because there's been no money that anybody's made in European soccer. The same will happen in reverse and I don't think that will affect the supporters one way or the other. Maybe it will just be exactly the same, but Isak will be on 100 grand instead of 400 grand, but he'll still be in EPL. But surely the Premier League, the biggest and best in the world, is just waiting for the perfect streaming partnership. If one thinks who is the future bidder for rights and it is no longer the generation of sky and TNT and it's now moved up to a higher level of a global platform, whether that's called Apple, whether it's called Amazon, whether it's called Netflix, you have to think, what do they want as content for their business model? And they're not keeping that a secret, Adam. They're saying, I only need the big stuff. I only need the big stuff. Whether it's around Christmas Day or Black Friday. If they only want the big stuff, what does that mean for week in, week out sports leagues? And you start thinking there's going to be a real, real shift into which piracy plays. And I couldn't see any scenario where the status quo went ahead. That doesn't mean there isn't a future future. I'm just sure it's a different future that will ultimately change how we organize sport. That's where we come to Saudi Arabia. Now, a previous episode of the Athletic FC podcast At what Cost? Saudi Arabia and soccer discussed the nation's growing influence on the game. But the Saudis also know a lot about the power of piracy. The nation was involved in a two year illegal streaming attack on neighboring Qatar, which cost beIN sports approximately $1 billion in lost revenue. It contributed to the Premier League's decision making on Newcastle's Saudi sale. That's been a massive step that felt really significant this week, hasn't it? The resolution with beIN Sports and piracy issues. Hugely this summer, Saudi Arabia contributed to a potentially game changing proposition for football. Just like Roger was talking about in part funding both Dazn and FIFA. The club World cup was able to be shown free to air around the world. Dazn now is very, very influenced by Saudi. Maybe will be more in the future. Dazn is a global platform, so they would prefer global rights. Just like Amazon won global zone, Netflix want global rights. What are we seeing happening in neon just now, Adam? We are seeing the Champions League coming up with packages for global rights. So I'll leave you with this. I've got no evidence of this, but I like to think like this. Dazn financed by Saudi makes a big, big, big offer for the Champions League for global or just call it European rights. Just say that. But its condition is that the Saudi teams play in the Champions League. That's what I would do. Now that may sound like a dystopian future, but the bond between FIFA, Dazn and Saudi is gathering pace. The FIFA plus streaming platform will officially launch next year. Standing alongside Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, FIFA president Gianni Infantino was smiling as he posted on Instagram that FIFA is reimagining how the world will watch, share and celebrate football. It's more than a platform, he says. It's the foundation of football's global digital future. Whether people like it or not, big changes are happening. Whether these sort of steps ease the piracy problem is still a big unknown, though what's certain is those governing the game have to keep up with the cultural direction of travel towards illegal streaming that's underpinning crime rather than football's finances. It's clear a recalibration is needed to ease a coming crisis. Now we want your thoughts on the illegal streaming issue. In the podcast description, there's a link to an anonymous survey that we'd really appreciate if you would fill in. We'll publish the results on the Athletic and as always, let us know what you think in the comments too. The underground world of illegal streaming was a special episode of the Athletic FC podcast. It was written and presented by me, Adam Leventhal. Executive Producer was Abby Patterson with additional production from J. Beal. Hey, it's Marc Maron from WTF here to let you know that this podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. And I'm sure the reason you're listening to this podcast right now is because you chose it well. Choose progressives, Name your price tool and you could find insurance options that fit your budget so you can pick the best one for your situation. Who doesn't like choice try it@progressive.com and now some legal info. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. This holiday, give the gift that says let's cancel plans and just lounge. Meundies has dropped their new holiday collection and it's made for maximum cozy. We're talking soft as snow, ultra modal fabric, festive prints and loungewear so comfy your couch might get the jealous onesies, hoodies, joggers, even delightfully quirky holiday designs. You're welcome. Knock out all your holiday gifting needs with deals up to 60% off@meundies.com acast Enter promo code acast that's meundies.com acast code acast this episode is brought to you by Addio. The AI native CRM Adeo is built to scale with your business. From day one, setup is instant and in seconds of syncing your email and calendar, you'll see all your relationships in one place, fully enriched with actionable insights. With Addio, AI isn't just a feature, it's the foundation. You can do things like instantly prospect and route leads with research agents, get real time insights from AI during customer conversations, and build powerful AI automations for your most complex workflows. Industry leaders like TaskRabbit, Granola and Flat File are already experiencing. What's next for CRM? Start now at addio.com pod and get 15% off your first year. That's a T T I O.com pod.