Video piracy in the UK

Now, I am not sure if this relates to other countries, but I can imagine it does in more than only the UK.

I think the issue is availability. Let's take Premier League as a starting point. To watch all the televised games, you have to sign up to THREE separate services - Sky Sports, TNT Sports and Amazon Prime. Even then, you can watch only 200 of 380 fixtures.

This is a con of course, as many football fans don't want all the other sports and other content on those channels, and wouldn't sign up to them unless they had to for the Premier League.

On top of this there are the 180 (almost half!) of games which are not televised at all in the UK. However, we all know that they are ALL being televised somewhere, and so the illegal services will re-stream these. This means even people who might be paying for all of those sports services will likely be tempted to use illegal services simply due to the lack of legal access to them.

If you are watching streams of games which you aren't even able to pay for, is this really stealing and should it be illegal?

I believe this then stimulates the "theft" aspect. Imagine you pay a mint for those three services, and watch unavailable games on a fire stick or similar. The experience is almost as good, and certainly acceptable. I think quite a few people might then cancel one or more of those services and watch ALL the games on the illegal sites, thinking that if they are watching some anyway, what's the difference?

This makes the use of illegal streaming mainstream and socially acceptable, which further stimulates usage.

Obviously there are also other people who cannot afford it, or simply don't want to pay for it, and will use illegal streams for the prime purpose of saving money, but I swear that most people would happily pay IF the prices were reasonable. For example, a single Premier League package which included access to all those three channels but ONLY the Premier League content, with any other content being upsells. There's also the discussion of the ridiculous situation where almost half of the games can be watched abroad, but not in the country in which they are being played.

The EFL is similar with over 1650 games but only about 1000 broadcast. Again, with those if you live abroad you can pay for a subscription, but only for one clubs games. If you live in the UK, you cannot even do that.

It's now similar with other streaming services - Netflix, Prime, Apple TV+, Disney, Discovery+, DAZN, Lionsgate and f**k knows how many more. It almost feels like if a series becomes extremely successful they will start a new streaming service full of s**t plus that one series, just to squeeze some more money out of you.

It is all getting a bit out of hand, and I am not surprised that people don't feel bad about streaming the odd thing here and there when they are already paying high costs for the services they have. Perhaps it is time to introduce streaming services licenses and restrict the amount available much like mobile and fixed internet networks. Force them to consolidate their services.

Posted By: Legacy Fan, Dec 13, 18:23:29