The loss of income due to the illegal broadcasting of matches is estimated at 290 million euros per year for the sports sector, Arcom said on Thursday, which is concerned about the increase in pirate IPTV for football.
“This amount represents 15% of the sports content broadcast market and affects the entire sector, clubs, federations (…) and amateur sport,” detailed Pauline Combredet-Blassel, deputy general director of the Arcom, during a conference in Paris.
According to her, this pirated content also represents a shortfall of 420 million per year for the State in terms of social and tax revenue.
Pauline Combredet-Blassel was certainly pleased that “piracy is falling structurally”, in particular thanks to the blocking of “live streaming” sites whose number of users has fallen in France by 18% between 2023. and 2024. More than 7,000 illegal domain names have also been blocked by 2022, she argued.
Illegal IPTV
But the trend is much less encouraging when it comes to users of illegal IPTV via connected boxes which provide access to a bouquet of channels for a much lower subscription than the legal offer.
“We have blocked more than 1,600 since the start of 2024, but the question is whether this will be enough,” asked the manager, referring to a “major issue”.
At his side, Benjamin Morel, general director of LFP Media, commercial subsidiary of the Professional Football League, was very alarmist. “Since the start of the 2024-2025 season, we have been facing a phenomenon of unprecedented scale,” he declared, citing an Ipsos study according to which 37% of people who watched Ligue 1 this season l ‘did illegally.
According to this survey, 55% of spectators of the last OM-PSG classico at the end of October used illegal sources.
Benjamin Morel also tried to counter the argument according to which the legal offer from the main Ligue 1 broadcaster DAZN, controversial because of its high initial cost, since revised downwards, could have created a draft.
“The prices can in no way justify piracy, which is theft,” he said, explaining the success of the boxes by its “all-inclusive” offer, while the legal offer for broadcasting European championships is distributed between several broadcasters. “The risk with IPTV [illégale] is that it replaces all existing platforms and channels,” said Benjamin Morel.
