Sports piracy site Streameast has shuttered, two men arrested in connection

The popular sports piracy site Streameast has been shut down just one day prior to the start of NFL season.

According to a report by Jacob Feldman in Sportico, Streameast garnered 1.6 billion visits by sports fans over 80 associated domains last year. The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) called the pirate streamer “the largest illegal sports platform anywhere.”

Last year, U.S. officials seized several individual domains associated with Streameast, but the illegal streamer had over 400 alternative domains to utilize after the fact. Affected Streameast domains now redirect to ACE’s “Watch Legally” landing page, Sportico reports.

Last month, The Athletic reported two men living outside of Cairo were arrested in connection to a copyright infringement case, linking them with more than $6 million in illegal revenues.

The NFL and other popular global sports leagues have gone to great lengths in recent years to crackdown on illegal streaming. According to a report in Variety, more than one-in-ten American adults pirated movies, TV shows, or live sports in 2022. That amounts to 23 million people. In 2023, an Oddspedia survey suggested that 35% of NFL fans “regularly watch their team’s games” through illegal streams, with nearly half saying they use illegal streams to watch at least one game per season.

For authorities, trying to quell illegal streaming is like playing a never-ending game of Whack-A-Mole. As soon as one site gets shutdown, several more will pop up, and sports fans will simply shift their loyalties to the new sites. However, Streameast in particular had gained a sizeable foothold among the American audience. And its shutdown, right as NFL season begins, will have a portion of football fans scrambling for alternative methods to watch the games this upcoming weekend.