**Please ensure you read - unofficial/illegal match streams 2022-23**

[Southdownswolf]

Would there be a Gold and Silver away subscription for those with the correct points ?

They're going to bring in a new Platinum level....

 

[Pagey]

51% off the population are hurriedly deleting their search history on the laptop, not for the football.

 

[Ned]

Hmmmm, how many coppers will go to their morning briefing and laugh at this.

“Right lads, priority for today we need you to go around these addresses and confiscate a few Firesticks, oh and whilst you at it no watching dodgy streams at home for a couple of weeks.”

These stories come out from time to time to scare a few people into switching off.

Most of the coppers I know actually have fire sticks with IPTV loaded on them.

 

[Urko]

1,000 homes, with search warrants, honestly who writes this crap let alone believes it. Absolutely hilarious

 

[derbyrameater]

if it went to FA and PL broadcasting the games how will we pay footballers wages ?

 

[Lisas Husband]

What a load of old ****.

 

[I'm the Wanderer]

I'll tell you what, if my house is getting broken into when my wife and daughter are there by themselves and they call the police but are told they are out busting people who stream illegally and can't send help, I'll say, "Oh well......if that's the case, it's ok then. I mean, afterall, law enforcement should have their priorities straight!"

My girls will have to fend for themselves, no problem!

 

[dgm6769]

How do police "track" illegal" iptv users? Only your isp can see your Internet usage and a vpn renders that useless and seeing how they are pushing use of a vpn for every day use on TV adverts now.
Smells like bs to me .

 

[Southdownswolf]

How do police "track" illegal" iptv users? Only your isp can see your Internet usage and a vpn renders that useless and seeing how they are pushing use of a vpn for every day use on TV adverts now .

Some VPN's keep track of websites,isp's etc. If they do, then the police can get that info.
In some countries they insist VPN's keep this info if they are based in that country.

 

[dgm6769]

Some VPN's keep track of websites,isp's etc. If they do, then the police can get that info.
In some countries they insist VPN's keep this info if they are based in that country.

I understand that but records will or should be only given out with a court order but the better vpn services have a no record guarantee.
Anyway they will not be knocking my door.

 

[Mutchy]

How do police "track" illegal" iptv users? Only your isp can see your Internet usage and a vpn renders that useless and seeing how they are pushing use of a vpn for every day use on TV adverts now.
Smells like bs to me .

Doesn’t it sound like they’ve raided a provider, one users have subscribed to, and got details that way?

 

[Jawwfc]

If they've got enough coppers to go round knocking doors about this then I and also a lot of coppers would like to know where they have found the extra officers to go round knocking on 1000s of doors when coppers are left single crewing policing whole towns.

 

[bigwolf]

Doesn’t it sound like they’ve raided a provider, one users have subscribed to, and got details that way?

Yes they will have a obtained a list from a raid. Or at least may have.

It's absolute *******s. The police can't and won't so anything. Perhaps a letter may get sent to a few peeps but that's it nothing more.

Bit like when you get snapped speeding by one of those community speedwatch groups. You get a letter on police headed paper but they can't so a thing.

 

[Chris H]

I'll tell you what, if my house is getting broken into when my wife and daughter are there by themselves and they call the police but are told they are out busting people who stream illegally and can't send help, I'll say, "Oh well......if that's the case, it's ok then. I mean, afterall, law enforcement should have their priorities straight!"

My girls will have to fend for themselves, no problem!

Just tell them you’re watching Southampton vs Palace on an illegal stream, you’ll get a whole riot squad there in no time!

 

[Southdownswolf]

Just tell them you’re watching Southampton vs Palace on an illegal stream, you’ll get a whole riot squad there in no time!

No, you'll get a psychiatrist visit

 

[VancouverWolf]

The police probably don’t like any more than you do. They don’t need this grief from peaceful people watching a game. The PL or the tv companies file a complaint every so often and the cops have to follow up now and again.

 

[I'm the Wanderer]

No, you'll get a psychiatrist visit

straight to the looney bin!

 

[Monketron]

It's all just propaganda to scare people straight. It might work with some but most will just carry on. They can keep taking down sites but a replacement is often up within hours.

The only way to truly solve this is to give people what they want, the ability to legally stream the games they want at a reasonable price. Look how TV and Music piracy dropped off a cliff once Netflix/Spotify showed up.

 

[wolvesaywe]

It's all just propaganda to scare people straight. It might work with some but most will just carry on. They can keep taking down sites but a replacement is often up within hours.

The only way to truly solve this is to give people what they want, the ability to legally stream the games they want at a reasonable price. Look how TV and Music piracy dropped off a cliff once Netflix/Spotify showed up.

Perfectly put

It's such a simple solution yet we live in a country where you still can't legally watch your own team play a 3pm Saturday game

I'd say at least half the people I know now have IPTV. These are not the people who should be vilified, it's the companies and authorities who allow the consumer to be utterly ripped off for a service that doesn't even allow them to watch most of their team's games live.

 

[Very Proud (AKA Still Proud)]

Has always been said that the main argument of not showing games at Saturday at 3:00pm was the impact on attendances. This was also from a time of the single black and white TV and three channels.

That argument is hardly relevant anymore, in less than 20 years there's become very little need for TV schedules and blackouts, the way in which the next generation is watching their sports and entertainment has changed dramatically. There will still be a desire for attending a live game.

They seem to think that by persisting to make streaming illegal they will win the day, but they are one step and more behind. I've no doubt there are discussions at PL and amongst broadcasters on how to embrace this and they know the only way to win is to be better than the streamers, remember in the modern world the consumer will decide.

On a footnote, about 15 years ago I went to an ESPN bar in Baltimore, they had a big room at the back, where they had a NASA style wall of TV screens showing each of the NFL games going on that day, I was blown away t'was a great experience. The UK has the ability to do this, just needs a change of mindset.

 

[thetwistedsock]

Short memories.

During the pandemic lockdown the premier league was available on a pay per view basis. I seem to remember there was complaints about the pricing from the beginning.

People still reverted to illegal streams.

 

[clivewolves]

I was watching Early Doors last night on iPlayer and I can just imagine the two policemen telling the landlord how they are cracking down on illegal streams whilst having a pint and watching an illegal stream.

 

[Chris H]

Short memories.

During the pandemic lockdown the premier league was available on a pay per view basis. I seem to remember there was complaints about the pricing from the beginning.

People still reverted to illegal streams.

Yeah because they wanted to charge £15 a game to people who likely already pay sky / bt / Amazon circa £50 a month for the privilege of watching some of the games and still a good half of them aren’t available after paying all that money.

I think £10 a month is lower than they’d go but £20 a month for all PL games would sell easily. It’s more than people pay for IPTV but it’d still sell easily.

There will always be a few that find ways to watch and won’t pay a penny if they can help it, which is their choice if they want to take that chance but I imagine a good majority would pay a decent wedge for full access.

 

[thetwistedsock]

Yeah because they wanted to charge £15 a game to people who likely already pay sky / bt / Amazon circa £50 a month for the privilege of watching some of the games and still a good half of them aren’t available after paying all that money.

I think £10 a month is lower than they’d go but £20 a month for all PL games would sell easily. It’s more than people pay for IPTV but it’d still sell easily.

There will always be a few that find ways to watch and won’t pay a penny if they can help it, which is their choice if they want to take that chance but I imagine a good majority would pay a decent wedge for full access.

£20 per month is only £200 per year to the provider, or more realistically £167 per ten months. I don't think there's a business model there at that price.

 

[dgm6769]

How much do sky charge a pub these days to show games ? In the hundreds pm I bet .

 

[Woody]

Has always been said that the main argument of not showing games at Saturday at 3:00pm was the impact on attendances. This was also from a time of the single black and white TV and three channels.

That argument is hardly relevant anymore, in less than 20 years there's become very little need for TV schedules and blackouts, the way in which the next generation is watching their sports and entertainment has changed dramatically. There will still be a desire for attending a live game.

They seem to think that by persisting to make streaming illegal they will win the day, but they are one step and more behind. I've no doubt there are discussions at PL and amongst broadcasters on how to embrace this and they know the only way to win is to be better than the streamers, remember in the modern world the consumer will decide.

On a footnote, about 15 years ago I went to an ESPN bar in Baltimore, they had a big room at the back, where they had a NASA style wall of TV screens showing each of the NFL games going on that day, I was blown away t'was a great experience. The UK has the ability to do this, just needs a change of mindset.

It is no longer a valid argument. For the price of a couple of match tickets it's possible to watch every game in a season on TV if you go down the IPTV route.
I live in Wales and driving back for the games, especially evening kick offs, is a real pain but I still do it.
If you have the desire to watch live football it makes no difference whether it's on TV or not.

 

[Olivergoldblack]

Yeah because they wanted to charge £15 a game to people who likely already pay sky / bt / Amazon circa £50 a month for the privilege of watching some of the games and still a good half of them aren’t available after paying all that money.

I think £10 a month is lower than they’d go but £20 a month for all PL games would sell easily. It’s more than people pay for IPTV but it’d still sell easily.

There will always be a few that find ways to watch and won’t pay a penny if they can help it, which is their choice if they want to take that chance but I imagine a good majority would pay a decent wedge for full access.

They should charge per match, or an all you can eat monthly subscription. They can still charge for advertising as obviously a lot more people will watch Wolves than Albion and they could charge the advertisers accordingly.

The thing that puts me off with the current TV packages is that you pay all that money, but you still can't watch all your teams games. I only want to watch Wolves TBH.

It's just incredible in this day and age, like tonight for instance, unless you're one of the 3000 with a ticket (which only to be in that position, you'd have to spent 1000's before hand on other tickets, to even get that chance). So the only way of legally following the match is via radio, which is terrible, it's alright if your in the car, but its a visual entertainment at the end of the day.

Imagine if some episodes of strictly were radio only, to protect the live audience ticket sales.

 

[Chris H]

£20 per month is only £200 per year to the provider, or more realistically £167 per ten months. I don't think there's a business model there at that price.

They bring in circa £1.7bn a year from domestic rights, 14m people watched sky sports in a single day back in October 2020. Not all of those would be football but I’d say a decent chunk would.

If 75% of those would be interested in a subscription that’s 10.5m at £200 a year so circa £2.1bn. That’s without conserving people who don’t have sky but have BT sports instead.

Then if you consider that a subscription making every game available to watch might drag in a few million more than don’t currently I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think you could get 15m subscribers in the UK alone. That’s £3bn so as long as they can cover their broadcasting costs for circa £1.3bn (a lot of which is already in place and just needs to be maintained and paid for) they break even as it stands.

They’d then be able to sell that same package direct to subscribers worldwide with their overheads already paid for pretty much meaning any international subscription are mostly profit.

If they offered:

£25 rolling 30 day contract
£20 a month 12 month contract
£15 per game week
£8 per match

They’d rake in a good chunk of annual subscriptions and then top that up with people who want to pay adhoc.

The reason they don’t do it isn’t because it’s not cost effective, it’s because they’re happy with what they currently get. They could get some more but don’t really need to at the moment as they’re clear of the other leagues. They’d gain but the big winners would be us fans, but who really cares about us as long as they bring in enough as it is, why bother being more inclusive if it takes more effort even if they could ultimately get more money overall.

 

[Chris H]

They should charge per match, or an all you can eat monthly subscription. They can still charge for advertising as obviously a lot more people will watch Wolves than Albion and they could charge the advertisers accordingly.

The thing that puts me off with the current TV packages is that you pay all that money, but you still can't watch all your teams games. I only want to watch Wolves TBH.

It's just incredible in this day and age, like tonight for instance, unless you're one of the 3000 with a ticket (which only to be in that position, you'd have to spent 1000's before hand on other tickets, to even get that chance). So the only way of legally following the match is via radio, which is terrible, it's alright if your in the car, but its a visual entertainment at the end of the day.

Imagine if some episodes of strictly were radio only, to protect the live audience ticket sales.

As I’ve just said in another reply, offer a range of packages to suit and they’d clean up.

They just can’t be bothered because they currently get a good wedge for not too much effort so why put in a lot more effort for that chunk extra when they don’t feel they currently need it.

 

[glorybox]

How much do sky charge a pub these days to show games ? In the hundreds pm I bet .

A business i'm involved with are charged about £650/month

 

[thetwistedsock]

They bring in circa £1.7bn a year from domestic rights, 14m people watched sky sports in a single day back in October 2020. Not all of those would be football but I’d say a decent chunk would.

If 75% of those would be interested in a subscription that’s 10.5m at £200 a year so circa £2.1bn. That’s without conserving people who don’t have sky but have BT sports instead.

Then if you consider that a subscription making every game available to watch might drag in a few million more than don’t currently I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think you could get 15m subscribers in the UK alone. That’s £3bn so as long as they can cover their broadcasting costs for circa £1.3bn (a lot of which is already in place and just needs to be maintained and paid for) they break even as it stands.

They’d then be able to sell that same package direct to subscribers worldwide with their overheads already paid for pretty much meaning any international subscription are mostly profit.

If they offered:

£25 rolling 30 day contract
£20 a month 12 month contract
£15 per game week
£8 per match

They’d rake in a good chunk of annual subscriptions and then top that up with people who want to pay adhoc.

The reason they don’t do it isn’t because it’s not cost effective, it’s because they’re happy with what they currently get. They could get some more but don’t really need to at the moment as they’re clear of the other leagues. They’d gain but the big winners would be us fans, but who really cares about us as long as they bring in enough as it is, why bother being more inclusive if it takes more effort even if they could ultimately get more money overall.

Ratings peak was 3.3M viewers at 4:55pm which at that time we can reasonably say had one football game and the Vitality Blast finals day plus the IPL.

Let's be generous and say 100% of the viewers were watching football and 100% of them want to pay for a Premier League streaming service then again I say it doesn't work as a business model. That's before considering people who will be present at all of their clubs games home & away etc. DAZN is in trouble, for example.

Sky Sports viewing: More than 14m people watch on network's best ever day

Sky Sports has announced its best ever day of viewing thanks to a bumper day of live sport on Sunday October 4.

www.skysports.com

 

[fleck1]

I know its been said for years now, but surely the Premier league must be looking at a Netflix style platform. Package it up as Premier league tv and sell it globally cutting out the middle man, price is reasonably and sell it to the world and they will blow their current profits out of the water. Could sell tv season tickets for clubs or sell it as a platform to view all games it has so much potential financially

 

[Boss Hogg]

£20 per month is only £200 per year to the provider, or more realistically £167 per ten months. I don't think there's a business model there at that price.

Being an overseas fan I can’t even watch something like BBC iplayer; there’s not even a subscription available - I’d happily pay the equivalent of a UK tv licence to access this which is around £13 a month.

There must be many thousands of people like me that would happily do this and with technology available to marry up subscribers with their IP address the business model must exist?

 

[Wall heath Wanderer]

Can't wait untill Gene Hunt shows up to stamp on all my toys.

 

[Axle]

I am not sure that it is even illegal to receive streams, only to host them (admittedly, this is confused when using bittorrents which utilise the viewer's hardware to distribute). I suppose an analogy would be VCRs where it was illegal to record off the TV, but it doesn't stop the possession of the VCR (if used for playback / personal use only).

It's a ridiculous use of police time considering this is a civil matter and not a criminal one.

The conflation between the two is the problem. All that is required is a cease and desist letter and that should be coming from the companies, not the coppers.

 

[JOSWolf]

Police to visit 1,000 homes in a bid to crack down on illegal streaming

Police will visit 1,000 homes this week as part of a bid to crackdown on streaming illegal Premier League games as well as other sports.

www.joe.co.uk

Isnt it nice the Police are concentrating so much resources on this when crime rates are through the roof and people left high and dry when reporting vehicle thefts etc. I despair.

 

[Spitfire]

£20 per month is only £200 per year to the provider, or more realistically £167 per ten months. I don't think there's a business model there at that price.

That's roughly what MLB and NFL charge and it seems to work for them.

 

[Chris H]

Ratings peak was 3.3M viewers at 4:55pm which at that time we can reasonably say had one football game and the Vitality Blast finals day plus the IPL.

Let's be generous and say 100% of the viewers were watching football and 100% of them want to pay for a Premier League streaming service then again I say it doesn't work as a business model. That's before considering people who will be present at all of their clubs games home & away etc. DAZN is in trouble, for example.

Sky Sports viewing: More than 14m people watch on network's best ever day

Sky Sports has announced its best ever day of viewing thanks to a bumper day of live sport on Sunday October 4.

www.skysports.com

Yeah but you’re assuming that 3.3m was every person who’d like to watch some football at some point over a weekend all watching at that very moment.

I’ve got access to all tv games and probably watch 2 or 3 a week realistically, ours plus a couple of others if timing suits me. I’d be more than happy to pay £20 for the convenience of being able to watch any games I want if they take my fancy. People who subscribe to one of Sky or BT would be no worse off cost wise switching. People who subscribe to both would be saving money. Both parties would be getting more games for what they pay.

People who stream illegally may be tempted in to paying 20 quid a month for a more reliable better quality service than 60 a year for one that’s potentially at risk of closing down one day.

Let’s be honest, no one knows the real numbers, but there’s clearly enough appetite for existing providers to pay the PL £5bn a year and sell that on to customers making a mark up themselves.

The question in my opinion isn’t whether the PL can make more money going direct, it’s whether they have the appetite for taking on the overheads and doing the leg work which I think is the real reason they haven’t done it yet.

The streaming argument is valid to an extent, but it could just as easily be sold as a channel via existing tv means as well as an online service in the same way I can pay for Disney or Netflix via sky or virgin.

Whatever the arguments either way, the fact you now have to pay Sky, BT and have a Prime subscription and even then still can’t access all PL games legally is ridiculous. If they don’t want to do it themselves then make all games available to rights holders.

As others have said, the fact I can’t legally watch our game tonight despite the fact the cameras are there and fans from abroad can is stupid.

 

[wolvesaywe]

The problem for TV companies and the Premier League is technology has long since stole a march on them and it will be nigh on impossible to put the genie back in the bottle whatever they do from here. They've focused solely on anti-piracy methods instead of putting in a platform that rivals the illegal streamers.

Every week I see a contact on my phone has joined the Telegram app, which means only one thing. A new IPTV customer and another cancelled Sky subscription.

 

[Flump]

Given all the very intelligent "why w0nt dey stop proppah crimbinals" posts...

The original article looks very clickbaity. It looks like it's basically a rehash of this, but with a snappier, albeit very misleading headline.

From the actual article we see that

Throughout January, FACT and police are visiting homes across the UK, serving notices to individuals to cease illegal streaming activities with immediate effect and informing users of the associated risks, which include criminal prosecution.

Over 1,000 individuals have been identified following raids by West Mercia Police against a UK-based illegal streaming service that was supplying entertainment and sports content via modified boxes, firesticks, and subscriptions.

While criminal prosecution is pending against the operator of the illegal service, police are also reminding consumers that using illegal streaming services is not just a crime but one that is treated extremely seriously by the courts. In 2021, two individuals, Paul Faulkner and Stephen Millington were sentenced to a total of 16 months in prison for watching unauthorised streams.

So basically, the police identified 1,000 homes - presumably by getting a database of clients from the illegal streams host.

And "FACT and the police" are visiting a completely unknown number of homes, "reminding them" - in all likelihood this means they turn up together at one house to get some press, and then post out letters to the other 999 homes.

So everyone can calm down that murderers will be completely unchecked this weekend, as SWAT teams will be kicking in 1000 doors. Or carry on, as getting angry about largely imaginary situations seems to make some people happy.