A lot of illegal streams were doing the rounds, and those responsible could face a hefty fine.
The dust is beginning to settle on one of the biggest boxing spectacles of the year. We don’t need to get into the technical side of things, you’ve read all about it at this stage.
The professional boxer ultimately proved that he’s better at boxing than a man who does not box professionally, who would have guessed?
But, we all tuned in regardless; some because they wanted McGregor to win, others because they wanted to see him lose, and a few rose in the early hours out of curiosity just to see how the action would unfold.
The fight was available on pay-per-view for $100 in the US and €25 euro on the Sky Sports Box Office in Ireland.
But many people around the world resorted to illegal live streams to view the fight rather than fork out the cash for the PPV.
Irdeto, a digital platform security company, said it identified 239 illegal streams of the fight on Saturday, and said they were watched by approximately 2,930,598 people. Many of these came from Facebook and Twitter as well as traditional pirating sites.
According to Torrentfreak, ‘a publication dedicated to bringing the latest news about copyright, privacy and everything related to filesharing’, a traceable code appeared on some of the streams being broadcast.
They said:
According to our sources, these codes didn’t appear when the main action was taking place but when the camera turned to people in each corner.
Since no digits appeared over the top of the fight itself, it might suggest that they were put there by a broadcaster, in this instance Sky Box Office, who were licensed to show the fight in the UK.
According to the website, this code only appeared when the fighters returned to their corners, and not during the actual fight, which means they could have been put their by the broadcaster to track the illicit stream.
Earlier this year, it was confirmed that a TV provider in the US will launch legal action against people who streamed the Danny Green versus Anthony Mundine boxing bout on social media.
According to ABC, one lawyer said that those who live-streamed the event on Facebook could face fines of up to $60,000 or five years in prison.
