A senior executive with Comcast-owned Sky Group has criticized Amazon for manufacturing and selling streaming television devices that allow pirates to illegally access sports and other content.
The practice deprives Sky and other sports broadcasters of significant revenue, at a time when the competition for live sports rights is hot and investments run deep, Sky Group Chief Operating Officer Nick Herm complained in an interview with the Financial Times.
Herm said piracy has cost Sky “hundreds of millions of dollars” over the years due to the availability of illegal streams that offer live soccer (football), boxing, Formula 1, tennis and other athletic competitions.
“About half” of all pirate sports streams are being accessed through modified streaming devices that use the Fire TV operating system, which itself is a modified version of Android that Amazon ships with its low-cost Fire TV sticks and other streaming gadgets.
Amazon does not necessarily endorse the practice of modifying Fire TV sticks, but the open source nature of Android means the company has little ability to curb the practice.
Still, Herm complains that the company does practically nothing to address the issue of piracy using its devices.
“We do not get enough engagement to address some of those problems where people are buying these devices in bulk,” Fern said. “They’re breaking them and sideloading pirated apps on them, and people are just buying them.”
A spokesperson for Amazon has not yet returned an e-mail from The Desk seeking a reaction to Fern’s comments.
It isn’t just Fire TV sticks that are a problem for Amazon: An investigation by this reporter two years ago revealed the company was selling an Android TV streaming video device commonly called a “Superbox,” which is marketed as a way for streamers to watch thousands of movies, sports and news channels while paying rates that are far lower than cable and satellite.
Superboxes sold via Amazon and other stores do not typically come preloaded with illegal TV apps, but nearly all include instructions that inform customers how to download software and purchase services that offer unlawful access to thousands of channels for as little as $15 per month — far less than the average cost of a cable TV subscription.
Amazon continues to make Superbox devices available for sale, though it occasionally removes individual listings if customers flag them. Over time, those listings are replaced with new product pages for the exact same item. Walmart removed all Superbox listings from its website in 2022 and implemented measures that were meant to prevent customers from searching for and buying the device, but product pages have popped up slowly over time, and the Superbox is once again available for purchase through the Walmart website.
Sky and other rights holders often feel like they’re fighting an uphill battle — with pirates, with device manufacturers, with online broadband companies, and with others — to curb the spread of illicit streams. Still, the broadcasters continue the fight, working with industry groups and law enforcement in dozens of countries to bring criminal charges and fines that are meant to deter pirates from selling devices and illegally redistributing content online.
“It’s basically organized crime,” Herm said. “We work closely with the police. The sums are huge. It’s a battle, and you need a lot of people to lean in to solve it.”
Little can be done to prevent people from buying the devices themselves, and there are few actual penalties for sports fans who choose to buy a modified Fire TV stick and illegally access unlicensed sports broadcasts through it.
“It’s always difficult to put an exact number on it because if you ask people if they pirate or not they’re not always going to be honest with you,” Tom Burrows, the Global Head of Rights at sports streamer DAZN, said in an interview. “When you do analysis, there’s plenty of evidence to show that it is sizable.”
