The Pirates vs the Premier League Podcast is now available and you can play each episode on this page below or you can find it within your favorite podcast app.
Watching live sport illegally has become second nature for millions of fans across the country, fueled by the cost-of-living crisis and greater accessibility to content.
Matt Cutler and Richard Gillis take a journey deep into the world of illicit Premier League broadcasting, uncovering the true scale of the problem, speaking to the criminals making large sums of money from the demand for cheap content, and exploring the potential cost to sport should piracy not be curbed soon.
This is an interesting podcast where the hosts examine free sports streaming sites and the IPTV service underworld. The interviews within the episodes provide various points of view on this criminal enterprise.
I personally enjoyed the comparison of the music industry to the entertainment industry and how Spotify successfully made pirating music a thing of the past. They enabled customers to quickly access their favorite music in an inexpensive way. The entertainment industry must embrace the Spotify model or they will die. It’s as simple as that.
The Premier League successfully brought down Flawless IPTV which is outlined in Episode 3. But what about the thousands of other IPTV services currently available on the Internet? IPTV is becoming mainstream as cash-strapped people are tired of paying these monopolies absurd amounts of had-earned money.
In the podcast the argument is made that these various sport franchises won’t survive if the TV rights aren’t kept in place. How about you first stop paying these athletes so much money? Paying athletes like Neymar Jr £240 million/year might be a good place to start. Wouldn’t ad dollars go up if you double or triple the amount of viewers and cut out the legacy broadcast partner whose no longer needed due to the Internet?
In my opinion there is no win for these various broadcast companies and sport enterprises in today’s Internet age. The IPTV services and free streaming sites will continue to pop up until a Spotify-like service is created for the sport, TV, and movie industry. The tables have turned and the consumers now have inexpensive or free options.
What are your thoughts after listening to these episodes? Let us know in the comments section below.
Podcast Episodes Available Below
Intro: Introducing The Pirates vs the Premier League
Episode 1: A Cold Thursday Night
Episode 2: Into the Criminal Underworld
Episode 3: Flawless, Absolutely Flawless
Episode 4: The Premier League’s Dilemma
Episode 5: Sport’s Napster Moment
The Pirates vs the Premier League Podcast Episodes Intro: Introducing The Pirates vs the Premier League
Watching live sport illegally has become second nature for millions of fans across the country, fueled by the cost-of-living crisis and grater accessibility to content. Since January Matt Cutler and Richard Gillis have been on a journey…
Episode 1: A Cold Thursday Night
Matt is sitting at home on a Thursday evening, 100 miles away from his beloved Villa Park, desperately trying to watch a game that isn’t being shown live on TV in the UK. And his tried and tested methods to watch it aren’t working…
Episode 2: Into the Criminal Underworld
Watching Premier League games through illegal broadcast streams has gone mainstream. But, the average football fan doesn’t know the criminal underbelly that is working in the shadows to provide their fix. Meet Neo, the Balkans-based…
Episode 3: Flawless, Absolutely Flawless
Ten days after the 2022/23 Premier League season finished, five men were sentenced to 30 years in prison for illegally broadcasting sport. The case, known as Operation Flawless, is believed to be the world’s largest-ever illegal streaming…
Episode 4: The Premier League’s Dilemma
The Premier League is the world’s most popular sports league, and is highly active in closing down, blocking and prosecuting people who pirate its broadcast content. Despite this, the Premier League is largely silent on the issue of…
Episode 5: Sport’s Napster Moment
Twenty-five years ago illegal file-sharing platform Napster transformed the music industry. Though it was short-lived in its initial iteration, it showed there was a new model for music, and was the precursor for legal platforms that offered…
