A major crackdown has knocked out Streameast, the world's largest illegal sports streaming operation, following a year-long probe by a US-based anti-piracy group. Authorities in Egypt, partnering with the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment—ACE—which counts Amazon, Netflix, and Apple among its members, swooped in on August 24, shutting down Streameast and arresting two suspects west of Cairo, the Athletic reports. The network, spanning 80 domains, boasted 1.6 billion visits in the last year alone, giving users free access to everything from soccer's English Premier League and Champions League to the NBA, NFL, and pay-per-view boxing.
The operation, with strong traffic from the US, UK, Germany, and the Philippines, laundered over $6 million in ad revenue through a shell company in the United Arab Emirates and invested illicit cash in Egyptian real estate, investigators say. ACE works with law enforcement agencies worldwide, including the US Department of Justice. Ed McCarthy at British sports streaming platform DAZN Group, an ACE member, said Streameast had been "siphoning value from sports at every level and putting fans across the world at risk," the BBC reports.
Industry leaders hailed the takedown as a decisive blow against digital piracy. Midia Research analyst Ben Woods, however, tells the BBC that the game of "whack-a-mole" will continue as long as users face high costs to watch live sports legally. "Cracking down on pirates directly is just one part of the solution," he says. "Only by exploring ways to make live sport more accessible will this issue become less of a problem for major sports leagues." A recent Brand Finance survey found that nearly half of global sports fans consider using unofficial streams to dodge full-price subscriptions.
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"RIP Streameast, which I of course never used and have no strong feelings about," Nathan Grayson writes at Aftermath. He notes, however, that Streameast has long dodged shutdowns with a series of different URLs, and some of them appear to still be active. ACE says it is investigating "copycat" sites.
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