Pirate Football Going Large on Facebook Live

A substantial number of Spanish and Latin American Facebook pages are reportedly  illegally streaming high-profile top flight matches free of charge. By using the social network’s Facebook Live video sharing service, pirate broadcasts are made available by a combination of links and temporary profiles. It is thought that hundreds of thousands of Facebook users may have viewed matches that would otherwise be solely available on pay-television.

December 3 saw Barcelona welcome Real Madrid to Camp Nou for ‘El Clasico’, the world’s largest domestic football event between the last two Champions League and World Club Cup winners. The match was witnessed by over 600 million people across 185 countries.

The game was pirated via Facebook Live, with one particular stream attracting 4.6m viewers by half-time. Certain sites are able to circumvent Facebook regulations by advertising pages providing streams of significant matches.

The network of pages providing the illegal stream then shuts down following the match, with some created specifically for one purpose.

Whilst no collusion with larger soccer sites can be proved, there is an expectation that Facebook will begin procedures to crack down on this practice in the near future.