57% of people think that there is no need to subscribe to pay TV for sport due to the availability of pirate content

Piracy of live sport has been around for a while but really started to go mainstream in about 2009/10. As a relatively recent issue it is therefore hard to analyse and as is often the case in the absence of any decent information individuals and companies tend towards the version of the truth that suits them at the time.

Therefore to start the ball rolling and to try to get the beginnings of a picture of consumer attitudes towards sports piracy and the link with sport on Pay TV we started an online survey.

High audience pirate sites do not respond to DMCA style notices at all - as the video below clearly shows - but what impact does this really have ?

Only a few questions to keep people engaged and responses from UK, Sweden, Canada, Ireland and Germany. 60% of responses were in the 25-44 range with an even split across the other age ranges.

Amazingly 43% of those surveyed thought that the types of sites featured in the video above might be legal. This highlights the challenge of complex copyright laws and the effective job some of the search engines have done to muddy the waters (excuse for "Mannish Boy" reference).

The chart below shows solid awareness of the existence of these sites.

So what seems to be emerging is that the public are aware of sites in a "grey area" as they see it and that these sites are not impacted by DMCA style activity.

So what if this makes very little difference to the decision to subscribe or maintain a subscription to a relevant Pay TV service ?

Well as the chart below shows it does seem that with the prevalence of free alternatives the sport driven subscription decision for pay tv is getting tougher

 
We will keep our research activity going in this area and welcome any constructive contribution to this emerging debate.