On September 13, one of the most anticipated matches for the Russian football audience will take place – the derby of CSKA and Spartak. Interestingly, the game will not be shown live on federal channels, but it will almost certainly be possible to find the broadcasts on Twitch. Do not be surprised: it seems that neither the league nor the gaming streaming platform has yet learned to fight piracy.
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As Sport-Express reported, in 2018 RPL signed a contract with Match TV, according to which the channel pays for the rights to football broadcasts ₽1.7 billion per year. Some league games are played on a public TV channel, but most of them are paid.
Even the match “Tambov” – “Ufa” is broadcast on a dozen pirate broadcasts
However, the Runet user, it seems, is not used to paying for content on the Internet – various services through which you can watch football without paying a penny for it are very popular. There are many ways, and they are all diverse. Apparently, even so much that a couple of years ago the media stated that the channel is literally robbed. Apparently, the situation has not changed much to this day.
Twitch is one of the platforms whose functionality is convenient for piracy. To do this, it is enough to create a channel and start your own broadcast of an already running game, and voila: you can sculpt advertising on the stream and earn money from donations.
Most, if not all, of RPL tour matches can be found in one way or another on Twitch. For example, last Sunday Akhmat hosted CSKA: the game was held in prime time, and we found at least five pirated broadcasts on Twitch.
Pirate broadcasts are covered with advertising banners and donations
Some pirates used a blank Match Premier soundtrack, others commented on top of it – each broadcast had its own donation form and its own bookmaker advertisements.
Not to say that many people gather at such broadcasts – on average, from 200 to a couple of thousand. However, the total loss of the official broadcast would certainly be significant.
Yes, but not very quickly. During the match “Akhmat” – CSKA in the chat on one of the broadcasts, the bot constantly notified the viewers that in the event of a channel ban, it was necessary to go to the next one. They had a typical name with a serial number. As an example: the match is shown on RPL-LIVE-214 – in case of a ban, it was suggested to switch to RPL-LIVE-215. At the same time, all broadcasts took place in the FIFA 20 section, and the funny thing is that the first stream was blocked only in the 60th minute of the meeting!
Fake streams from s1mple are a common story on Twitch. Photo: Epic Esports Events
That being said, the problem of piracy and even fraud on Twitch is far from new. Fake broadcasts of popular streamers very often appear on the platform – s1mple, DrDisRespect, GeT_RiGhT and other famous players (mainly in shooters). Moreover, such channels can have thousands of viewers – all due to the so-called bot breeding. In a word, an imaginary hype is created, which not very attentive viewers can lead to.
Cases like these damage Twitch’s reputation a lot. Well-known streamers, like Ninja and s1mple, have already publicly contacted the platform several times, but the service has not yet been able to solve the problem once and for all.
As it turns out, no. In December 2019, Rambler Group tried to do this, which owns the broadcasts of the English Football Premier League – the matches, of course, were pirated on Twitch.
Rambler has filed a lawsuit against Twitch for fabulous ₽180 billion – the company counted 36 thousand illegal views and demanded from the Moscow City Court to prohibit the service in Russia. However, this did not lead to anything.
Everything was resolved pretty quickly, because Twitch complied with the instructions of Roskomnadzor and deleted the recordings of the Premier League broadcasts. There were no grounds for blocking, and a day after the filing of the claim, Rambler took him. The story ended there.
RPL – no, but in general there are official sports broadcasts. For example, at the end of July, Twitch, together with London’s Arsenal, Real Madrid, PSG and Juventus, opened the Sports category. The platform also has a dedicated TwitchSports channel that hosts some of the sports broadcasts – for example, you can find NBA games.
Football is available to the British on Twitch. Photo: Yahoo
In addition, Amazon, the owner of Twitch, acquired the rights to show Premier League games in the UK two years ago. Now the citizens of the kingdom have the opportunity to watch the official league broadcasts on Twitch. In addition to football and basketball, Twitch often streams chess, poker and even Formula 1.
It is quite possible that a partnership with Twitch could play into the hands of the same RPL. After all, this is also an entrance to a new audience. And pirate streams would probably find themselves in the bath more quickly.
Cover photo: vk.com/fcsm_official
