Piracy in sport: half of British fans watch paid content illegally, industry loses £700 million a year
According to Ampere Analysis, about half of British sports fans use illegal ways to watch paid broadcasts, and among 18–34-year-olds it is more than 70%. In the summer of 2026 the first high-profile sentences were handed down: a streamer from Lancashire received six and a half years in prison. WPI Economics estimates that piracy costs the industry £700 million annually. A separate topic was the Champions League final, shown behind a paywall for the first time in 30 years: 3.7 million IP addresses watched it illegally.
Dilnoza Rahimova