Lwar is declared and this war is fought with numbers. The illicit consumption of audiovisual and sports content by nearly 12 million French Internet users costs one billion euros in lost revenue for the sectors concerned, according to a study published in December by Hadopi (High Authority for the dissemination of works and protection of rights on the Internet).
The phenomenon is nothing new for the film or music industries, but it is now considered endemic for the sports industry. It is counting on the new tools of repression – against issuers more than against consumers – provided for in the bill that the Assembly will examine this Wednesday, March 17.
The numbers make you dizzy, a little because they waltz without always being very coherent. The study suggests that half of illegal consumers of audiovisual content watch sports competitions, while Médiamétrie estimated their number at 1.8 million in 2019, or even at 626,000 on average per day of Ligue 1 in 2020.
The Hadopi evokes an overall annual loss of 80 million euros (low estimate) for all the pay channels which broadcast sports. The Professional Football League is talking about 500 million euros for its discipline alone …
The price of passion
The number of pirate Internet users has appeared relatively stable for more than ten years, but the development of live streaming and illegal IPTV has increased the number of fraudsters who use these methods to watch sports, although they are not so easy to access or devoid of constraints (connection hazards, advertising pollution).
If the need for an active fight is becoming more pressing, it is above all because of the increasingly uncertain profitability of sports rights. Sellers and buyers make it a moral issue by invoking the opacity of this lucrative ecosystem, the damage for the entire industry, but also for amateur sport – affected by the decline in resources from the Buffet tax.
You still have to take the problem from the other end and ask yourself what piracy is the symptom of. The more expensive and fragmented the access to competitions, the more attractive the fraud. Some resort to it for lack of means, or protest against the price of subscriptions necessary to follow the major competitions.
For the most part, however, they subscribe to paid offers. A Hadopi-CSA study published on March 9 even reports that “illegal profiles” among sports fans, “Have on average 2.1 subscriptions, against 1.8 for consumers of fiction and sports with exclusively lawful practices”.
This study also confirms that the growth of broadcasting rights has been based on amateurs having the means to increase the number of paid subscriptions, the overall price having little effect on their choices. The problem is that this exploitation of passion sacrifices the penniless devotees and the less fervent audiences.
The show and its availability
The development of piracy questions this model, in particular that of football. By prioritizing obtaining the highest amounts over the accessibility of competitions, by relying on premium offers and audiences, its players have chosen to make it invisible to a large part of its audiences.
The French Mediapro fiasco illustrated the risks involved: unsustainable economy for rights-purchasers, increasing costs for viewers, disappearance of Ligue 1 from screens, devaluation of the product, clubs threatened with bankruptcy.
The repression and prevention of piracy, which appears more as a consequence than as a cause of the crisis, will not be enough: in the long term, it will be necessary to ensure the attractiveness of the offers and the quality of the show, but also its availability. .
Sport may need a revolution in its broadcasting models to adapt them to new uses, like the one that allowed the music industry to survive. But calls for a Netflix or sports Spotify sidestep that the former does not address the issue of dispersion and cost of offerings, and that the latter would lower revenues.
Whatever the model, not all professional leagues and the spectators of their competitions will be the winners. It is especially urgent to remember that sport owes its economic value to its popularity, and that in wanting to maximize one, one compromises the other.
