The Pirates vs the Premier League Podcast is now available and you can play each episode on this page below or you can find it within your favorite podcast app.
Watching live sport illegally has become second nature for millions of fans across the country, fueled by the cost-of-living crisis and greater accessibility to content.
Matt Cutler and Richard Gillis take a journey deep into the world of illicit Premier League broadcasting, uncovering the true scale of the problem, speaking to the criminals making large sums of money from the demand for cheap content, and exploring the potential cost to sport should piracy not be curbed soon.
There’s one thing that I kind of disagree with your statement regarding the athletes’ pay. It’s true that upper echelon receives large amounts of money. Most pro athletes are not upper echelon.
What is often ignored is that in the top level leagues, ownership is who makes the obscene amounts of dough. And their profits are often subsidized by taxpayers (not just in the US) and hidden via creative accounting. Moreover, the value of those franchises nearly always exceed whatever the rate of inflation.
I think it was “539” who did an analysis of Lebron James’ actual value, and it turned out that he was actually underpaid for the value that he added to the Cavs & the Heat.
The one thing that the EPL (and other professional leagues) ignores is that their long-term health requires retaining and growing its fan base. When the price of following your club becomes too high, the fanbase will decrease.
I have to question the math they use to arrive at certain figures for lost cash due to piracy.If something is of value to me and perhaps most we will pay for it,but take nfl sunday ticket as an example.chances are not many pirates are going to shell out that kind of money in the first place.Same can be applied to many other ppv and sporting events.I just think they over estimate these values.
I suspect that they just multiply the cost of their subscription times the estimated number of ‘pirates’, without any analysis regarding how many of those would actually pay the full price.
This is a topic I’ve been waiting for.
I pay for cable but also have antenna service the picks up over 80 crystal clear channels and broadcast to all TV’s in the house with Tablo.
I also pay for Netflix so my wife can watch all her sappy shows. (Yuck) I also have Amazon prime, and yes I play with IPTV but there’s not much on there that I don’t already pay for on one of the services.
The only thing I watch is sports, mostly baseball and football so I pay for MLB and NFL+. What drives me crazy is MLB blocks games when they are in my area or when someone buys the right to broadcast the game. I have only streamed a couple of games this year because of the blackout. If they want to stop pirates put together a sports package and I’ll buy it, then I’ll get rid of everything but Netflix so I can enjoy the game.
I agree with you and there are many of us just like that. I was helping a lady yesterday get setup because as a senior she no longer could afford cabletv on her SS check. She also said the main thing most important to her is baseball (home and away games) but to get that she needed one of the more expensive packages which for her was off the table. Fubo was once the cord-cutters paradise for sports but have since jacked prices to match the cable company and now no more options exist. So here I am hooking up a little box to the internet
A tip for NFL fans. If you get a streaming iptv service that includes all local Fox and CBS stations, you can get most of the games. Example: local CBS and/or Fox Kansas City will get the Chiefs games and the pre and post game shows. Same for each city.
