The largest hub for unauthorized live sports streams worldwide has been taken offline by a prominent anti-piracy organization. The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) announced its collaboration with Egyptian authorities to shut down Streameast, a platform that had attracted over 1.6 billion visits in the past year. Streameast facilitated access to pirated streams of popular sports events like Premier League football, Formula One races, and Major League Baseball games.
ACE’s chairman, Charles Rivkin, hailed the closure as a significant triumph in combating digital piracy, emphasizing the positive impact on sports leagues, entertainment companies, and fans globally. This action follows a previous report highlighting the extensive prevalence of illegal sports streaming. The sports broadcasting industry is lucrative, surpassing $60 billion (£44 billion) in media rights value last year.
Rising costs of broadcasting rights, coupled with the necessity for viewers to subscribe to multiple platforms for diverse matches, have led some individuals to resort to illegal streaming methods. ACE disclosed that the majority of traffic to Streameast originated from the UK, US, Canada, Philippines, and Germany.
In a related development, two individuals were apprehended in El-Sheikh Zaid, near Cairo, Egypt, on suspicion of copyright infringement. During a raid, law enforcement confiscated laptops, smartphones, cash, credit cards, and uncovered links to a UAE-based shell company allegedly involved in laundering £4.9 million in advertising revenue and £150,000 in cryptocurrency since 2010.
The shutdown of Streameast received commendation from Ed McCarthy, the COO of sports streaming platform DAZN Group, who expressed relief over halting the operation that was devaluing sports and jeopardizing fans globally. Visitors attempting to access Streameast will now be redirected to an ACE webpage offering legal viewing alternatives.
Entertainment analyst Ben Woods from Midia Research noted that while the closure of Streameast is a victory for broadcasters, the ongoing challenge of combatting live sports piracy persists. He cited the high costs associated with legal sports viewing and the shifting preferences of younger fans accustomed to free social media content as driving factors behind illegal streaming. Woods emphasized the need for enhancing accessibility to live sports as a fundamental step in mitigating piracy issues for major sports leagues.