Sky has criticised Amazon for failing to do enough to tackle a crisis in sports broadcast piracy that often involves the use of its Fire Stick TV devices, which it estimates make up about half of illegal streaming of Premier League football in the UK alone.
Nick Herm, chief operating officer at Sky, said piracy was costing the industry “hundreds of millions of dollars” and called on Amazon to work with the UK-based media group to crack down on illegal streaming.
He said that Fire Sticks accounted for “probably about half of the piracy” in the UK. Amazon is a Uefa Champions League rights holder that until recently also streamed some Premier League games.
“If you speak to friends and colleagues, [or] you watch football, people will know that you can get jail-broken Fire Sticks, and you can access pirated services on Fire Sticks,” he told the FT’s Business of Football conference.
“Jail-breaking” a Fire Stick allows people to install third-party streaming apps that can offer free movies and sports.
Tom Burrows, global head of rights at DAZN Group, the sports broadcaster, described piracy as “almost a crisis for the sports industry”, telling the conference: “There’s an argument to say that you can’t get exclusive rights any more because piracy is so bad.”
Executives at Sky said the use of Fire Stick TV devices in piracy was so prevalent it had become synonymous with the illegal act. Football fans at some grounds had taken to chanting “we’ve got our Fire Sticks” during games, they added.
Herm said: “There are football fans who literally have shirts printed out that say Fire Sticks on them . . . With some of the tech giants, Amazon in particular, we do not get enough engagement to address some of those problems, where people are buying these devices in bulk.”
Executives warn that sports rights will suffer as a result of piracy, with widespread illegal streaming undermining the value at which broadcasters would be prepared to pay to secure exclusive coverage.
Media analyst Claire Enders said piracy was “the number one problem of premium football . . . every market is plagued by piracy”.
She added: “I don’t know of any broadcaster in Europe that is fully able to monetise sports because of piracy.”
In the UK, Sky is working with the police and rights holders at the Premier League to try to tackle piracy.
But Herm said Amazon had not been helpful enough in addressing the problem. The broadcaster wants Amazon to lock down or impose controls and restrictions on the use of “side-loaded” unofficial apps on the devices.
Amazon said it was “committed to providing customers with a high-quality streaming experience while actively promoting a streaming landscape that respects intellectual property rights and encourages the responsible consumption of content”.
Amazon co-founded the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), the world’s content protection coalition that aims to shut down global piracy operations, and has introduced a policy prohibiting the sale of illicit streaming devices in its marketplace as well as on apps that infringe the rights of third parties.
It added: “On Fire TV, we’ve always encouraged our customers to use legal channels for accessing content and have included on-device warnings informing customers of the risks associated with installing or using apps from unknown sources.”