The big debate over the effectiveness of site-blocking measures will form part of the discussion in the United States this year as Hollywood promotes piracy blocking on home turf.
Elsewhere in the world, Europe in particular, proponents of site-blocking claim it’s effective at preventing access to pirate sites, at the same time as traffic to pirate sites continues to rise.
In the UK, where pirates have been soaked in negative messaging and in some cases, banged over the head with piracy horror stories for more than a year, the underlying anti-piracy campaign seems to be producing predictable results.
Millions Flock to Pirate Football Streams
Pirate streaming domains sportshub.fan and sportshub.stream direct users to different parts of the same site; a Reddit-labeled subdomain of sportshub.stream with the title Reddit Soccer Streams, and the main page of sportshub.stream, helpfully labeled Buffstreams or something else, where applicable.
In February, sportshub.fan was receiving around 5.1 million visits per month while sportshub.stream was servicing triple that, 14.9 million according to SimilarWeb data. In March, .fan suddenly rocketed to 12 million visits, with .stream plummeting to ‘just’ 8 million. Which domain would survive?
At the end of April after suddenly plummeting towards oblivion, .fan bottomed out with 4.9 million visits and, at the time of writing, it’s still alive. Sportshub.stream, on the other hand, served 16.6 million visits in April, a 108% boost in traffic over the previous month.
In the UK, where in theory everyone should feel anxious at the mere mention of an illegal stream, traffic in April was up 190% over the previous month.
For perspective, right now Sportshub is the UK’s 1,004th most popular website, period. In the sports category, it’s the 21st most popular site in the country; the illegal forbidden filling sandwiched between the artisan bread slices of Chelsea and UEFA’s official websites.
More Problems: GiveMeRedditStream & FreeStreamsLive
Drawing most of its traffic from an .xyz domain, GiveMeRedditStream is smaller than Sportshub with around 4.3 million visits per month. Compared to March, traffic was up around 24% in April, with visits from the UK enjoying an 18% uplift.
Also in the mix are .me and .cc variants that may not have any direct connections to .xyz, yet somehow manage to appear at the top of search results. That’s unhelpful; at some point the latter may have attempted to offload some malware, at least according to the security alerts currently blocking the way.
Finally, that brings us to FreeStreamsLive, which draws most traffic – around 4.2 million visits per month – to a Malaysian domain. Other domains with less traffic redirect to that .my domain, with the notable exception of freestreams-live1.com, which is currently under the care of United States authorities, most likely on a permanent basis after being seized late 2022.
According to information passed on to us yesterday, rendering all of these sites inaccessible is now a priority for the Premier League.
Premier League Filed Blocking Application May 1st
While we can’t confirm with 100% certainty the application relates to the above, on May 1st the Premier League filed an application for a blocking injunction at the High Court.
The listed defendants were the country’s largest internet service providers; British Telecommunications PLC, EE Limited, Plusnet PLC, Sky UK Limited, TalkTalk Telecom Limited, and Virgin Media Limited. In common with most if not all similar applications in recent years, none of the ISPs contested or even appeared. Since these are no-fault injunctions, the ISPs remain passive and let the Premier League do the work.
Whether this process was different to others preceding it is unclear. If the application does indeed relate to the three platforms detailed above, permission to start blocking sportshub, givemeredditstreams, and freestreamslive, may have been signed off in less than 48 hours.
That seems very quick and if true, will undoubtedly please the Premier League. How the sites’ operators will respond remains to be seen, but there appears to be (un)healthy demand for pirate sports streams in the UK, despite the shenanigans playing out in the media.
It’s been said before, but fans can’t be scared into becoming loyal customers. Equally, the Premier League needs quite a bit more than the £5 per month currently being charged by many pirate suppliers, which in many cases also includes a VPN to circumvent blocking.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
