- Sky Sports’ chief operating officer fears piracy is costing ‘hundreds of millions’
- The broadcaster is calling for Amazon to crack down on ‘jail-broken’ Fire Sticks
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Sky Sports have called on rival broadcaster Amazon to crack down on illegal streaming by adding tougher controls to Fire Sticks.
The broadcaster have criticised the American tech giant for failing to tackle piracy after it was estimated that Amazon’s Fire Sticks were indirectly to blame for approximately half of illegal streaming of Premier League football games in the UK.
Fearing that piracy is costing the industry ‘hundreds of millions of dollars’, Sky’s chief operating officer Nick Herm hit out at his rival broadcaster at the Financial Times Business of Football conference last week.
He said: ‘If you speak to friends and colleagues, [or] you watch football, people will know that you can get jail-broken Fire Sticks, and you can access pirated services on Fire Sticks.’
‘Jail-breaking’ is a practice where users can modify a device by removing restrictions imposed by the manufacturer and therefore install apps from outside of the internal operating system.
Sky is calling for Amazon to crack down on ‘jail-broken’ Fire Sticks, insisting that the devices are being bought ‘in bulk’ by football supporters.
Sky Sports have called on rival broadcaster Amazon to crack down more on illegal streaming
Sky Sports’ chief operating officer has estimated that Amazon’s Fire Sticks are indirectly to blame for approximately half of illegal streaming of Premier League football games in the UK
There has been a clampdown on illegal streaming in recent months led by FACT (above)
‘There are football fans who literally have shirts printed out that say Fire Sticks on them. With some of the tech giants, Amazon in particular, we do not get enough engagement to address some of those problems, where people are buying these devices in bulk.’
Amazon told the Financial Times: ‘(We are) committed to providing customers with a high-quality streaming experience while actively promoting a streaming landscape that respects intellectual property rights and encourages the responsible consumption of content.
‘On Fire TV, we’ve always encouraged our customers to use legal channels for accessing content and have included on-device warnings informing customers of the risks associated with installing or using apps from unknown sources.’
Over the past 12 months, FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft) has reported a concerning outbreak of investigations involving illegal Fire Sticks.
In January, a man from Birmingham who sold a pirated service known as Each Online was sentenced to two years and nine months in prison.
Gary McNally, 55, provided illegal access to Sky Entertainment, Sky Sports and Sky Movies, among other channels from international broadcasters, across a three-year period between 2017 and 2020.
Last year, a major illegal Sky Sports streaming network was shut down by authorities after a seismic investigation across Europe, with five homes in the UK raided.
It was reported that the network allegedly showed 2,500 channels including Sky Sports and was used by over 22million worldwide.
