Online piracy and a rant

Let us all assume all the below quotes and the news story is true.

Are the authorities really bothered about drugs, forced labour, people trafficking etc? If so, why isn't some real action actually taken? Is it not really quite simple? Or is it just pretend so the rich media companies get richer?

Go after the ones who legally steal* our "hard-earned money".
Why not cap wages of top flight footballers (and league one for what it's worth) and then drop subscription prices, don't insist that people need TNT Sports, BT Sports, Sky Sports, Amazon Prime for top flight football. Then, not only will piracy all but disappear, you can save even more by not having departments set up to look for criminal activity, because there won't be any..



"The head of the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit at the City of London Police has warned that the number of people of stream content illegally has gone “through the roof”.

"According to Sky, Amazon’s streaming sticks account for almost half the illegal streaming of Premier League football in the UK."

"Warbey warned that many consumers would not realise they were giving their personal details to fraudsters and organised crime groups. She said: “Those criminals are using that money, your hard-earned money, for lots of different things, usually drugs, certainly forced labour, people trafficking, huge amounts of other criminality that you’re feeding into, so it isn’t a victimless crime.”

Concerns over rise in illegal streaming in UK - RXTV

The average Premier League salary is around £3.09 million per year, or about £250,000 per month. This figure is significantly higher than the average earnings of other professional footballers in major European leagues like La Liga, Serie A, and the Bundesliga - source, Google AI

* My opinion

 

The thing is if you had one broadcaster that had all the football rights & you could pay say £20 a month to watch premier league, football league, champions league, europa league etc & you could pick & choose your matches basically like it has been on the weeks where Amazon have the premier league rights then I don’t think many football fans would begrudge paying it but the prices are ridiculous & you have to pay a small fortune to be able to watch all the different competitions.

Champions league knockout football is amazing but less & less people are watching it because of how expensive TNT is on top of Sky.

Back when ITV had the rights everyone spoke about the big champions league games. The Liverpool - Chelsea & Man Utd - Arsenal semis were huge because they were on terrestrial TV.

 

You're not entitled to watch top flight football, if you can't afford it then don't subscribe.

 

I can afford it, I choose not to.
That's not really the point though - I'm angered that there are simple solutions to big problems which aren't being addressed.

 

It's not a big problem at all. It's football. You aren't entitled to watch football at a price you choose, and if you do choose to steal then you are responsible for the consequences of funding criminal gangs.

 

Not just football though, latest films, ppv fights that people are using them for.

 

Should nationalise sports broadcasting, then it could be paid for out of the licence fee. i’m sure we’d still accept advertising in sports channels…

As it happens i get DiscoveryPlus as part of my EE contract and can watch TNT sports, but i’ll never go back to paying for TV again.

 

I’ve been saying for a long time that clubs should issue on line viewing season tickets with equivalent prices to in stadium ones. I don’t care about clubs other than my own and they are missing a marketing opportunity by giving it to the FL. There are fans living a long way from the ground who can’t afford to travel to home games and can’t afford to give up an entire day who would willingly pay. I don’t condone piracy, but it is a question of access and access denied because of the greed of the providers. If there was a single provider giving access at a reasonable price people would pay it and there would be no piracy.

 

get a vpn - pay the club for the games - sorted - both parties happy

 

Exactly. It's not life or death to watch Football. If you can't afford to pay for it, go without, don't pinch it.

 

Here are the terms and conditions you agreed to, take it up with the club if you're unhappy.

 

I would go one step further and for every season ticket sold, you would get game available to watch at home too.

 

I used to be pretty clued up on boxing. I watched all the fights on TV, read Boxing Monthly and watched Sky Sports’ Ringside show. Every now and then there’d be a mega fight with a stacked card on PPV, so I didn’t mind forking out for them too. But they took Ringside off, Boxing Monthly is no more and now 80%+ of live boxing requires subscriptions with other channels, either on TV or online. On top of that, the amount of mediocre fights that are put on PPV, which used to be a tenner, but is now £25, is just ridiculous. So apart from the really big fights I either watch the PPV ones on a dodgy stream or not at all.

All this has led to me drifting away from the sport. I watch the infrequent cards on Sky or Channel 5, and I’ll be at Oakwell again to see Callum Simpson, but I’d now struggle to name all the British belt holders. In fact, I could only name a few. I imagine many others have drifted away from boxing for similar reasons, but with live football now being screened across multiple platforms, each requiring additional subscriptions, is it about to go the same way?

 

I wanted to reply in much more detail but don't have time I just wanted to emphasise the point that the "big issue" I mentioned, wasn't football, but the people trafficking, organised crime etc.

If you really want to fix (or vastly reduce) organised crime, wouldn't it be easier to change the habits of 4 companies rather than the reported 8 million people who pirate it? (a quick google gave me that number, but it's not really relevant to my argument)

It's also truly upsetting that people can't see my point, or disagree with it.

Adverts & Subscriptions is another issue but that's for another day.

 

Contacting the club would not make any difference what-so-ever.
Anyway, they'd blame the FA, who'd blame the media who'd blame the club. Nothing would change without an actual revolution.

 

You’re bang on with this.

A lot of my mates followed boxing but the switch across to DAZN & PPV for the majority of shows has driven them away.

I mentioned to them last year that Josh Warrington was in a big fight with Leigh Wood & they didn’t even know it was happening when we’ve been to watch Warrington live in the past & they’d watch all his fights on Sky Sports.

I’m sure Eddie Hearn & Frank Warren are earning well out of DAZN but barely anyone watches it & I can’t imagine that’s good for the long term health of the sport.

 

The terms and conditions make it clear that there's no guarantee a fixture will take place on a specific day. If you go ahead and buy one then you accept that risk. If you are unhappy that you might miss a game then either don't buy one, or take it up to the club to encourage them to refund you on a pro-rata basis, as they would for a cancelled fixture. But in any case it's not a justification for thievery.

You don't want a revolution, you want something for nothing. If you want to watch top flight football a subscription to Premier Sports is £99 a year and they show loads of La Liga games. Capping player wages would simply result in players leaving the Premier League to likely head to Saudi - making the league worse. If you want to watch an inferior product just pay the £99 and watch Spanish football.