Its existence is as old as the virtual world. In the 2000s, it was already shaking the powerful music and audiovisual industries. In a famous commercial first broadcast in 2004, the Hollywood studio lobby portrayed web pirates as potential criminals, comparing illegal downloading to car theft, set to music so catchy it made you want to to play the big criminal by downloading the latest Linkin Park album on Emule or MegaUpload.
About twenty years later, the offensive led with great fanfare by the FBI against illegal downloading and the ephemeral existence of Hadopi (having since joined the CSA in Arcom) has finally changed nothing: it is still so simple to watch the film of your choice on obscure sites, without paying anything to anyone. Illegal streaming is still doing as well, or even better than ever, in the world of sport: it is more than ever a key player in the broadcasting of world Football, and has largely supplanted the broadcaster of the French championship in France. While DAZN would cap at 500,000 followers, more than 800,000 would rely on IPTV. “A phenomenon of unprecedented magnitude”, recognized Benjamin Morel, CEO of LFP Médias, at Monde : according to an Ipsos study, 37% of potential viewers of the French championship would now opt for illegal broadcast channels, a figure which even rose to 55% on the evening of the OM-PSG Classic. Behind the crazy proportions taken by the piracy of the League's commercial product, the latter can no longer hide: through its calamitous choices, it is the main responsible for this situation.
Will the pirates return safely?
1,341 domain names closed, international operations carried out by Interpol as well as in the United States, the mobilization announced by Arcom at the bedside of French football broadcasters, Bein Sport and DAZN… Nothing seems to be able to prevent the streamers of streamer. If their number would have fallen by 18% between 2022 and 2023 in France, still according to Ipsos, this inflection would only be due to its gradual replacement by IPTV, still not very widespread in France a few years ago. Broadcasters can urge public services to equip themselves with new weapons to fight against this scourge, with the blocking of illegal sites in real time, the only way to get recalcitrant football consumers who have become WorldWideWeb pirates back on the right track is elsewhere. For example, offering a quality service at a reasonable price. By promoting her product excessively on the backs of supporters, she only succeeded in sabotaging her toy.
The offer for watching Ligue 1 has gone in around ten years from a comprehensive package, including the best European championships and the Champions League for an attractive price, to a horrible, overly expensive formula, with a discounted format, without a set or broadcast to tell us about our championship, and a poor broadcast a few moments before each match. The League could have predicted the failure of this new formula after the Mediapro fiasco, when already in 2015 the Bein Sport model had proven to be perishable despite its 2.3 million subscribers and its much more attractive offer. How far away is the fever of Sunday evenings, when the League of Talents could keep us in suspense for hours, starting from the 5 p.m. match on the Canal Football Club to make the sauce rise and savor the Sunday shock as it should be. In comparison, the weekends concocted by DAZN taste very tasteless.
The “reduflation » French football
A depreciated service and an increased price, for a product that has barely improved. French football has become a sad avatar of the “reduflation” phenomenon. The guilty outbursts of French football leaders towards their dissatisfied public do not encourage people to turn away from illegal practices when it comes time to watch a match. Who would bleed themselves to have their weekly purge in order to justify Vincent Labrune's astronomical salary (gone from 100,000 to 70,000 euros per month, of course), or to make the CVC investment fund deal profitable? Which Ligue 2 supporter would pity Bein Sport, which constantly despises the public in the elite lobby? If the mass increase in illegal streaming in football today disrupts its financial balance, it is also an incentive for it to examine its conscience. Taking his followers too much for cash cows, the sanction was inevitable.
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