Premier League +, VPN piracy and lessons from Norway and France

The Premier League is built on its precious media rights but will its new streaming service be susceptible to the piracy that just scuppered a similar service in Norway?

In less than five months’ time the Premier League will take one of the most significant steps in its history when it launches its own direct-to-consumer streaming platform, Premier League +, so executives at the world’s pre-eminent domestic football competition could have been forgiven for casting some nervous glances at recent developments in Norway and France.

Earlier this month, Norway’s top football league suspended its DTC service, which allowed overseas viewers to watch games in the Eliteserien, over concerns that domestic fans were using VPNs to access the platform because it was priced considerably cheaper than the pay TV channels which broadcast matches in the Scandinavian country.

Just days later, senior officials from the media arm of France’s Ligue 1 admitted that piracy of its content had grown so big that most domestic viewers were now watching via illegal means rather than through the DTC platform it launched this season or via official broadcaster BeIn Sports. The issue was costing the league “hundreds of millions of euros”, it said.

Given the importance of media rights value to the Premier League, this might have set off some alarm bells. The competition generates £3.8bn a year from selling its matches to domestic and international broadcasters, money that is mostly redistributed to clubs and keeps them globally competitive, perpetuating a virtuous cycle of interest, income and success.

Why Premier League + can’t prevent all piracy

Premier League + will launch in August, initially only in one territory – Singapore. Pricing has not been revealed yet, but if it is cheaper than the approximately £60-per-month cost of subscribing to Sky Sports and TNT Sports then it is not hard to see some UK fans being only too happy to access it using illegal means like those in Norway have for the Eliteserien.

It is, therefore, “extremely important” that Premier League + has adequate protections against illegal access which could “reduce the perceived value of media rights and undermine advertiser and partner confidence”, warns Eyal Elazar, VP market intelligence and product marketing at fraud prevention platform Riskified. 

“Strong protections safeguard both revenue and brand reputation. Proactive fraud controls also show a commitment to equitable, secure access for all legitimate fans. As leagues expand their direct-to-consumer strategies, those controls become a crucial part of the business model rather than an afterthought.”

It is vital to recognise, however, that piracy in general cannot be eradicated completely, says Dan Rayburn, a US-based media analyst who specialises in streaming technology. Adopting a DTC platform does not inherently increase the risk, he adds: “Netflix has piracy. Prime Video has piracy. Everybody has piracy. It’s part of the business.”

“Any DTC offering – whether it’s small, at a game level, or it’s large, like Netflix – it’s a huge undertaking in terms of what we call the video stack,” Rayburn says. “How do you create, capture and store, transcode, monetise, protect, track, playback, video? It’s complicated. And this idea that one day companies are going to get rid of piracy, it’s not reality.”

What tech can be used to prevent piracy?

There are various technologies that can be applied to protect streams against illegal access and piracy, however, says Elazar, from “multi-factor authentication, monitoring login patterns for VPN use or unusual geolocations, and limiting simultaneous streams per account. More advanced approaches use AI-driven anomaly detection to flag suspicious behavior in real time.”

Where Norway’s Eliteserien may have failed is in having adequate security, such as digital rights management (DRM) which means the content can only be decrypted on registered devices, says Rayburn: “They might say, ‘we had authentication’. Authentication is not encryption. Were you passing a token? If they were doing nothing, of course your stream is going to be pirated.”

The Premier League has long been one of the most front-footed organisations in world sport on piracy, from its 2012 High Court battle with a Portsmouth landlady over her use of a cheaper Greek satellite TV subscription to show games in her pub to its more recent pursuit of individuals for selling illegal access to broadcasts via Kodi boxes and Firesticks.

It has more resources than most to tackle the threat, so it should be no surprise that the Premier League is taking no chances as it builds its new platform. Sources stressed that it already enforces the most comprehensive content security and anti‑piracy standards, and that Premier League + would incorporate strong barriers to anyone trying to hack in from outside Singapore.

Price and engagement are also weapons

Preventing access is only one aspect of preventing piracy, though. Rights holders like the Premier League also have to minimise the incentive for people to want an illegal version of their product, says Ed Abis, CEO of Dizplai, which helps broadcasters such as Sky and properties including I’m A Celebrity and The Hundred maximise audience engagement. 

The most obvious lever at their disposal is pricing, in this case ensuring Premier League + isn’t hugely cheaper than that £60 a month. “Fans will be happy to pay a fair fee to watch the content, but when they feel like they’re getting hoodwinked into paying a premium, that’s why they go down the road of, ‘I’m going to get a Firestick or a VPN’,” says Abis.

Another is trying to make the official offering more compelling than standard coverage. Content creators such as Mark Goldbridge have demonstrated the appetite among younger audiences in particular for broadcasts that they can play their own part in, to the extent that Germany’s Bundesliga this season gave rights to Goldbridge in a bid to tap new markets.

“I think they’ve got to make the product in itself more compelling,” adds Abis. “I don’t think the game is the only thing that people want to consume. There are ways to engage the audience and make them feel part of it that transcends just passively consuming content. And passively consuming content lends itself to piracy, ultimately.”