This is some bad news for a lot of people.
The NBA, UFC, and NFL are reportedly planning on making it “harder” for a lot of people to watch games soon.
Watching the NFL is a lot easier than the NBA and UFC considering a good portion of the games are on regular TV and you only need an antenna to watch but there are still Monday and Thursday Night Football games that you can’t watch unless you pay for it via cable or some subscription. Plus, if your favorite team is a team that isn’t in your market you might not get to see them for free at anytime so you’d have to pay for Sunday Ticket.
The NBA and UFC though, you more than likely have to pay to watch every single game or fight. Most NBA games in a team’s market are on basic cable (depending on the cable provider) and if you want to watch other team’s you have to either catch them if they’re on TNT or ESPN or pay for NBA League Pass. But, even if you pay for League Pass because you cut the cord and don’t have cable, if the team you want to see is playing in the same market you’re in or on ESPN/TNT, the game will be blacked out making it harder to watch.
And we all know the big UFC fights are PPV that can range from $49.99-$99.99 or more.
All of this could get pretty expensive.
To get around all of this, a lot of fans of these sports just go the illegal streaming route.
There are lots of sites anyone can go to in order to watch an illegal stream of just about any sport and the NBA, NFL, and UFC aren’t happy with that. To solve that problem, the three leagues are planning on rewriting the DMCA to shut down the illegal streams instantly according to Verge.
The NFL, NBA, and UFC want to rewrite the laws for fast DMCA takedowns https://t.co/0ofMYmsBBC pic.twitter.com/w70ZXmC5rT
— The Verge (@verge) August 29, 2023
What are the DMCA laws you ask? DMCA stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act and it’s a federal law that is designed to help copyright holders from online left like illegal distribution or reproduction of their work.
Why would they be doing this you ask? The simple answer is because the sports industry loses a potential $28 billion in annual revenue per year due to illegal streams.
“Sports organizations believe the US Patent and Trademark Office works too slowly when taking down illegal livestreams and want to rewrite the law to make the process faster.
“This would be a relatively modest and non-controversial update to the DMCA that could be included in the broader reforms being considered by Congress or could be addressed separately,” the letter from the NFL, NBA, and UFC reads. It also points out that online service providers take hours or even days before removing content in response to takedown notices.
Additionally, the letter cites that the “global sports industry is losing up to $28 billion in additional potential annual revenue” since those who watch pirated streams continue to view them successfully and have no reason to switch to a, well, expensive paid stream or subscription.
Now, one big question that would come from this is if fans would pay to watch the sport in one of the ways that are available like the leagues are probably assuming they would do, would they continue to try to find and/or set up illegal streams, or would they just not watch altogether?
