Most British sports fans think it’s fine to illegally stream live action, according to an industry report.
And even the majority of athletes believe it’s socially acceptable to use illegal pirating services, despite broadcasters indirectly boosting their salaries.
The findings come from the Sport Industry Report 2026, which sampled 1,002 members of the public and 264 sports professionals.
Damningly, 66 per cent of the sports professionals surveyed and 58 per cent of regular people think illegal streaming is acceptable – despite them claiming to be ‘interested’ or ‘very interested’ in sport.
The shocking revelation comes amid a continued police crackdown on ‘dodgy’ Amazon Fire Sticks which is sniffing out piracy across the United Kingdom.
With football rights fragmented across multiple broadcasters, fans could be asked to shell out more than £1,350 each year to watch games on TV when Paramount+ start broadcasting the Champions League in 2027.
Affordability of attending fixtures is the main concern for fans across every age group, according to the Sport Industry Report.
Sixty-seven per cent of people believe that going to live sporting events will become a ‘luxury’ in the next five years.
That worry comes amid the impression that Premier League clubs are trying to phase out season tickets so they can earn more per seat per match.
In June, Daily Mail Sport reported that as many as 59 per cent of UK Fire Stick owners admitted to turning to the device for illegal streaming purposes amid spiralling costs.
Meanwhile, vendors of ‘dodgy’ Amazon Fire Sticks are reportedly suspending their services after the police declared war on the illegal devices.
An investigation in Scotland by the Sunday Post revealed that providers have essentially cut off their services – leaving their underhand customers fuming.
FACT (the Federation Against Copyright Theft) has been teaming up with police across the UK to sniff out and punish those who illegally access what everybody else pays for.
In November, Daily Mail Sport revealed how chiefs are going about their investigations.
Tech-savvy criminals are up against Premier League investigators armed with forensics, private prosecutions and police raids.
The business of illegal sports streaming is a lucrative one. In July, 36-year-old Stephen Woodward was jailed for three years after making £1.1million from three illegal streaming sites over a seven-year period.
Following repeated alerts from the Premier League in recent years, there has been a major focus on tackling illegal streaming in the UK.
This has led to a string of arrests, including one man based in Halifax last year, with Sonny Kanda jailed for two years after cheating legitimate providers out of more than £108,000 across an 18-month period between 2020 and 2022.
Research in 2023 by the Intellectual Property Office claimed that nearly four million people in the UK had illegally streamed live sport in the previous year.
