And piracy is already having impacts on the pitch.
At a conference last year, Tom Burrows, the head of global rights at the sports streaming platform DAZN, described piracy as a “huge problem” for his company, and “almost a crisis for the sports rights industry”.
Just months after he made those comments, DAZN agreed to end its deal with the French football league, under which it was allowed to screen the top tier of French football matches within France. The agreement followed a bitter dispute, which focused in part on the streamer’s claims the league had not done enough to combat piracy – although subscriber numbers were also understood to be an issue.
Even though DAZN paid a reported €100m (£85m) to end the contract (along with outstanding rights fees worth another €140m), its departure created a hole in the French league’s finances. It was left to set up its own streaming service, and the amount of broadcast income fell from roughly €700m per year to €412m this season, according to figures compiled by football-finance.com.
For a European powerhouse like Paris St Germain, with plenty of other revenue sources, this probably matters little. But for smaller teams it has been a serious problem. Angers SCO, a club in the west of France, said last year the affair had cost it €30m over two seasons, and forced it to sell its striker Estéban Lepaul.
It’s unlikely that a competition on the scale of the Premier League would lose its broadcaster. But piracy could ultimately limit how much they will be willing to pay in future.
