In the Shadow of "Likes" and "Shares": Football Piracy on Social Media

In the past year, in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, the piracy of audiovisual content grew by an average of 36%. BB Media detected that live football continues to be one of the main affected areas and analyzed its current offering in the media market. 

The main cable operators in these countries offer football packs at an average monthly value of USD 7.35. On the other hand, within subscription platforms, 25 broadcast sports events from different national leagues, for a monthly value that on average starts at USD 7.33. 

Despite the wide range of options, the passion for football transcends the boundaries of legality. Whether through illegal websites or social media, there are users who share sports events and evade anti-piracy barriers. 

Given this situation, BB Media conducted a survey in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico to measure the use of social media as an alternative to watch live sports content. The analysis indicated that, indeed, 64% of respondents watch live sports through social media. It is noteworthy that YouTube and Facebook ranked first and second in share. Together, they account for more than 50% of users. Specifically, 87% of respondents use social media to watch football matches. Additionally, regarding other sports, football takes all the credit, accounting for 45% of the sports share.

Special events and major league matches are the most consumed through this medium, with a penetration of more than 75% in both cases, showing similar behavior in all the analyzed countries. 

While it is a field that requires further investigation, the viewer numbers for recent events are worrying and necessitate measures to control the issue. Some of the actions to be taken to prevent this phenomenon from continuing to expand include increasing security to prevent CDN (content delivery network) leakage, as well as tracking and reporting pirated URLs and accounts live to achieve their blockage. 

On the other hand, it is worth considering whether a more flexible offer, allowing subscription by events and/or championships, reducing the access costs to them, could contribute to the decrease of online piracy. 

Powered by BB Media, a Fabric Data company