Lineal heavyweight champion of the world Tyson Fury is set to face Swedish challenger Otto Wallin on Saturday night, in what many boxing fans hope will be a stepping stone towards a highly anticipated rematch with WBC champion Deontay Wilder.
The bout will see 18,000 fight fans fill the T Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, while many more are expected to pay to watch on ESPN in the US and BT Sport Box Office in the UK.
But recent figures suggest millions will seek illegal live streams online, as piracy continues to plague boxing and other major sports events.
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Rather than pay the one-off £19.95 fee to watch the fight in the UK, boxing fans will be able to find countless links to pirated streams through search engines. Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit will also be flooded with illegal streams in the build up to the fight.
Figures from digital piracy authority Muso revealed that over 13 million people around the world used unauthorised channels to watch the heavyweight bout between Anthony Joshua and Andy Ruiz.
The vast majority of this audience came from people watching on YouTube, with an estimated 93 per cent choosing the Google-owned video platform to find pirated streams.
YouTube has several measures in place to prevent illegal streams from appearing, ranging from artificial intelligence algorithms that recognise pirated content, to human moderators.
But those sharing the streams have come up with ways to bypass these checks, such as blurring out the edges of the screen, or cropping the video.
Such techniques will likely be used for illegal streams of fight highlights the next day, as the late timing of the fight – the undercard will start at 2am in the UK and Fury’s fight will likely be around 4.30am – means many people will be searching for streams the next day.
For Fury’s fight against Wilder last December, Muso’s figures revealed that nearly 10 million people watched it illegally. Before the Joshua fight, this was the largest unlicensed audience that Muso had ever tracked for boxing.
“We saw how popular the Fury vs. Wilder fight was across piracy networks just six months ago and how a significant part of the audience was coming in through YouTube,” Andy Chatterley, CEO of Muso, told The Independent.
“The Joshua vs Ruiz fight was the largest unauthorised audience that we’ve ever tracked across boxing and it’s staggering to see that 93 per cent of the audience watched via YouTube.”
Separate research by the Industry for IP Awareness found that a proliferation of methods to watch illegal content had seen sports piracy reach “peak levels” this year.
“TV, sports and film piracy has reverted to peak levels in 2019,” a spokesperson for the consumer body said. “[Our research] also highlights the very real risks to users of these new methods of piracy.”
Cyber security experts have consistently warned of the dangers involved when clicking on unknown links promising free streams to sporting events, with many containing malware and other viruses.
Anyone caught hosting such streams also risks heavy fines for breaking the law.
