Has following a sporting event on television become too expensive? In any case, this is what we can read in dotted lines in a recent report from ACCES, a group of television players.
Amazon Prime, BeIN Sports, RMC, Canal+… the multiplication of TV subscriptions necessary to follow the major football events of the 2023-2024 season could well harm these same channels. According to a recent report from ACCES (Association of contracted service publishing channels), a grouping of large French channels, “ France significantly exceeded the European average in 2022 » for hacking live sporting events.
In France, piracy is progressing
Unsurprisingly, IPTV (here understood in the sense of finding a pirate stream retransmitting a sporting event on the Internet) and streaming capture the bulk of the volume of piracy. At the European level, “thepiracy rebounded in 2022 (+3.3%) after having steadily declined ”, says the report. These are obviously “ the broadcasts of sports competitions which appear to be the most affected “.
In France more precisely, 5.1% of the population has “ used such access » in 2022, a figure up significantly compared to 2021. France is also far ahead of Spain, Italy or Germany from this point of view. Faced with this problem, ACCESS advocates “ action by blocking at the IP address level » much more immediate than “ the current procedure with judicial notification » who suffers from “ inevitable delays “.
That said, according to a report from Arcom (the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication), the closure of pirate sites only benefits the legal offering very little. Faced with illegal site blocking, barely 7% of Internet users opt for a legal solution to continue watching content. The majority of troops continue to use illicit solutions (free or paid sites) or circumvention methods (VPN, code sharing, etc.). A good portion completely abandon the idea of watching the content they are looking for.
Watching sports is (very) expensive
It must be said that access to major sporting events on television is becoming more and more expensive. Over the period 2021-2022 (i.e. that analyzed in the ACCES report), the amount of subscriptions to watch football and other major sports amounted to €85.97 per month in France, according to calculations made by the sports media site.
Compared to our European neighbors (Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom), France was second to second on the podium of the most expensive countries to watch sport on television. In 2023, the bill fell slightly to around €70 per month, but this remains a sum, especially in times of crises and inflation.
Since the all-repressive model is clearly not very effective in dissuading the public from abandoning streaming and IPTV, the solution is perhaps to be found in the price and complexity of the offer…
Source : ACCESS, mediasport, Arcom
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