For the UK’s Premier League, the United States is still a relatively untapped market but given the potential, growth is being taken very seriously indeed.
As highlighted in its submission to the United States Trade Representative for its 2024 Review of Notorious Markets, in 2023 the Premier League opened an office in Manhattan, New York. This is the second international office for the UK’s top football league after opening in Singapore in 2019, primarily for the purpose of fighting piracy.
The Premier League’s submission to the USTR is significant in that the same platforms and services causing problems for the Premier League today are already similarly troublesome for live sports in the United States. With site-blocking looming in the United States, it’s worth highlighting that no rightsholder anywhere has more experience blocking live sports streams than the Premier League.
Dedicated Server Providers (DSPs)
The Premier League begins its submission with ‘Dedicated Server Providers’ because without them, no mainstream live video piracy would be possible. Premier League says its focus is on DSPs that (i) have been responsible for thousands of infringing live streams in the 2023/24 season and (ii) have not taken any meaningful action to prevent the infringements, “either in real-time or subsequently against the infringing customer(s).”
Amarutu Technology Ltd (“Amarutu”) – AS206264
Amarutu claims to have offices in Hong Kong and Seychelles but according to the Premier League, its datacenters are located in the United States and the Netherlands. Cloudflare data shows that U.S. traffic accounts for less than 10% of the total with over 62% linked to the Netherlands.
“[Amarutu] consistently ignores the takedown notices it receives from the Premier League every week,” the submission reads. “Amarutu was named in the USTR 2023 Review of Notorious Markets for Counterfeiting and Piracy…but has continued to allow large scale infringement of Premier League copyright through its services.
The Premier League says it has detected over 5,000 infringing streams already this season, in addition to over 5,000 during last season.
Amarutu says it forwards DMCA notices to its clients for resolution “but in most cases action is not required,” an assertion the Premier League strongly disputes. Exactly how many IPTV providers Amarutu has for clients would take some time to determine but just one of its allocated IP addresses is linked to 59 IPTV-related domains.
Reports suggest there are over 20,000 domain names hosted on Amarutu’s AS but describing it as predominantly infringing operation would be incorrect. Almost 16,000 of those domains are allocated to elearningontario.ca, which is operated by the government of Ontario in Canada.
Other reportedly problematic DSPs listed by the Premier League:
AS-Istqservers / Istqserverses (“Istq”) – AS212042 / AS211826
Istq is an allegedly Jordan-based DSP “that operates multiple ASNs, seemingly in order to evade efforts by legitimate copyright owners to enforce their IP rights.”
It previously appeared on the 2022 EU Commission’s Piracy Watchlist and in the 2023/24 season was reportedly responsible for 12,000+ infringing live streams. The submission claims that Istq “failed to take any meaningful action upon receipt of takedown notices.”
Best DC – AS216014
The Premier League says that provider PEENQ.NL (AS212370) was recently dissolved, and its IP addresses were allocated to BEST DC. However, they conclude that the same operator is responsible for both. PEENQ.NL was responsible for 14,000 infringing streams during the 2023/24 season, the Premier League notes.
HostPalace Web Solution PVT LTD (“Host Palace”) – AS134512
HostPalace is based in India and reportedly operates data centers located in the U.S., Europe, and India, and also runs a second host “apparently based in the UK.”
The Premier League is particularly scathing in its commentary, noting that Host Palace “takes no action whatsoever to cease the copyright infringement that it is well aware occurs across its network every week.”
Host Palace appeared in the EU Commission’s 2022 Watch List and was reportedly responsible for 20,000 infringing streams during the 2023/24 season.
Other DSPs reported by the Premier League: NetSolutions – AS47674, Pulsarnet – AS400409, Squitter-Networks – AS213371, AS27161 (previously Litnics / now unreserved), Virtual Systems LLC (“Virtual Systems”) – AS30860 and AS6698, ZETNET RO – AS25198
Streaming Platforms
Aliez.tv is described as a hybrid site that operates as both a streaming platform and a user generated content upload site. The Premier League believes it is closely linked to livetv.sx, a site that has caused problems for sports rightsholders for years.
“Over 3,000 infringing streams of Matches were detected on Aliez over Season 2023/24. A large percentage of the streams were delivered primarily by Squitter,” Premier League reports.
Other sites nominated by the UK’s top sports league clearly demonstrate that even when placed under huge pressure, including surprise domain seizures and widespread site-blocking measures, sites are capable of adapting and countering the threat.
Streaming Websites: Resilient, Even Under Pressure
Late 2022, Freestreams-live1 was targeted by U.S. law enforcement in a sweep designed to protect the FIFA World Cup. On that occasion Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) seized the streaming platform’s .com domain but with a switch to freestreams-live1.tv, it remained operational.
The Premier League’s submission states that the domain “continues to be a major source of live piracy” with four million visits during the 2023/24 season. True to form, however, the site appears to have dumped that domain a while back, having moved on to other TLDs.
Also under scrutiny is Footybite, part of a larger ring of sites covering various sports including NFL(bite) and NBA(bite). The Premier League believes that the sites fall under common ownership, with footybite.to accounting for almost 550 million visits alone during the 2023/24 season.
Public data from SimilarWeb, used by the Premier League in its submission to the USTR, currently reports just short of three million visits per month, 36 million visits per year. That falls short of the claimed half billion so whether that’s a reference to all ‘bite’ traffic combined or an error remains unclear.
Mentioned earlier in connection with Aliez.tv, the unquestionably notorious livetv.sx also receives an individual mention. Available in a dozen languages across multiple domains, the submission estimates traffic of 100 million+ visits per year. That’s despite the site being blocked in multiple countries due to Premier League injunctions.
In Italy, where site-blocking is increasingly the weapon of choice for Premier League rival Serie A, livetv.sx traffic increased by 259% last month alone.
Other streaming websites reported in the submission: Pirlo TV, Sportshub, Sportsurge.club, Streameast.app, Totalsportek, VIPBox, Xoilac
Subscription-Based IPTV Services
The Premier League nominates the usual suspects in this category, many of which have appeared in earlier reports submitted to the USTR or European Commission, either by the Premier League or other rightsholders involved in live sports.
The full list reads as follows: BingSport, EVPad, Family Box, Gazal, Globe IPTV, Lemo IPTV/IPTV Trends, Redline, Spider, SVI Cloud, Yacine TV
“As demonstrated throughout this submission, IP infringement through online piracy is a complex issue that involves many different intermediaries and forms of technology,” the Premier League notes in closing comments.
“The entities identified above, however, are all playing an integral role in the direct offering of high volumes of infringing live streams of Matches (as well as,in many cases, other copyright protected content) and are therefore recommended for inclusion on the Notorious Market List.
The full Premier League submission to the USTR is available here (pdf)
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Source : Premier League’s Priority IPTV Piracy Threats Reported to U.S. Government
