Piracy

I suspect we all know of someone who has a ‘modified firestick’. It seems that they are pretty much impossible to track, so for £80 a year you are able to get every sporting event and movie channel going - including PPV events. Risk free.

Pirating has always been a thing -
I remember doing tape-to-tape as a kid, with the latest ZX Spectrum games, or even recording the Charts on Radio 1 to make my own tapes.

I also used to work at music festivals where recordings of the bands were on sale minutes after they came off stage.
So it has always been a thing, and it has ripped off right holders of billions of pounds over the years. So the Firestick is just the current way of avoiding buying a licensed product.

I pay for Sky TV, and TNT on occasion, we have Netflix and Amazon as well and I think Disney + somewhere. I’ve only a vague idea of how much this totals per month, but for me it’s worth it. Someone else was telling me the other day that she realised the family were paying over £120 a month on subscriptions, and that they had just built up. She rang Sky and negotiated it down to about £80 per month, which she told me she thought was ‘fair’.

So as someone who works in sport, how do I feel about people who are effectively taking money out of my industry? It doesn’t make me angry but I wonder how many people would not take that risk (if it actually exists) and would pay for all the services if they were a bit cheaper? And if there were more people paying, would that lower the prices for everyone else (I doubt it).

Anyway I don’t have the answer, who does? There will always be people who won’t pay, but is there a point where most people will pay a ‘fair’ price for what they are watching and avoid the perceived risk of breaking the law?