🏴‍☠️ The Real Cost of Your "Free" Sports Stream

Welcome to the 323 of you who joined this newsletter this week!

My platform is growing at a fast pace, I now have sponsors and agencies reaching out to me rather frequently wanting me to promote their products. Its rewarding to me to know that my platform is in demand, but despite the attention I can assure you that you will not see any 8Sleep mattress adverts in any of my YouTube videos any time soon!

You may start seeing more interaction with this newsletter though. Adverts placed in these newsletters, referral programs. Even some surveys. I am going to become far more interactive with you all over the summer, something that I have yet to do thus far.

Today, we explore a topic that I have wanted to cover for a long time! I’m fascinated by those of you who sail the digital seas 🏴‍☠️

Watching sport is really expensive.

A survey done prior to the 2022/23 Premier League campaign showed that if you wanted to watch all the Premier League games available to you in a given season it would cost £105.92per month to do so.

This is £1,270 per annum!

More than almost every season ticket in the English footballing pyramid!

Add in boxing, Major League Soccer or the WWE, and your streaming bill balloons further. You’ll need DAZN, Apple TV and now Netflix for WWE. The total quickly becomes unsustainable for the average fan.

As a result, piracy has exploded in recent years. The reasons are obvious:

• Far cheaper to consume

• Fewer subscriptions needed

• Access to everything, on any channel!

The craziest thing about conventional sports consumption is that even if you pay for all the streaming services, you still do not have exposure to every game. The 3PM Premier League blackout exists and there are times on Sundays where some games are simply not broadcast on any British channel.

The Pirates know this and they are taking full advantage.

Pirates are clever. They use an encryption to advanced encryption and offshore hosting to stay ahead of the law. Many sell these to consumers offering “all sports” packages for £5 to £10 a month. Many are also harvesting and selling user data but…who cares when sports are cheap.

The scale of some of these operations are scary.

In 2023, a series of British homes were raided as the police shut down a piracy network that boasted 22 million users. That operation was reportedly making £208 million a month!

In the US popular sites like Methstreams, StreamEast and Crackstreams have been targeted. Many other smaller sites get the infamous ICE page when you visit the URL’s now.

The authorities have begun to cotton on but many think it’s a futile effort. When one popular site goes down, others appear and the problem continues to exist.

For sports organisations, it is a clear threat. Dana White has voiced his opinions about piracy in the UFC. Elsewhere, DAZN withheld a €70 million payment to Ligue 1 last year, citing a lack of support from the French league in tackling piracy.

It’s not just about legal protection either. Piracy directly impacts broadcast revenues. When broadcasters lose viewers to illegal streams, they pay less for rights. That means less money for leagues, which means smaller budgets for clubs. The entire system starts to crack.

And then there are the fans.

Yes, the short-term gain is obvious. There is cheaper and broader access to all sports for all fans. But the streams are often poor quality. I personally cannot stand watching football behind real time, nor when the screen freezes every 60 seconds or so.

Life is more expensive now and subscription fatigue is real. Gen Z, an important future audience is not engaging in the same way. They watch highlights, not full games. They avoid alcohol and premium TV.

So the question is not whether piracy should be stopped. The question is whether the industry is willing to meet fans halfway.

So far, no-one has cracked the code.

I’ll leave you this week with an amazing video of LeBron James being caught watching his sons basketball game on StreamEast last year!

If one of the wealthiest athletes in the world streams games, what hope do we have!?

See you next week.