COMMENT: Beating sports pirates at the password sharing game

Pandemic lockdowns have sent SVOD adoption soaring, reaching 16.7 million UK homes by the end of 2020. This growth, however, has also coincided with an increase in illegal viewing. Identifying and beating these pirates won’t necessarily be simple, but it is vital to protect revenues and reputations.

Despite the boom in legitimate users — with 89% of fans holding a pay-TV or OTT subscription — only 16% have never viewed content via illegitimate sources. This makes it clear the appreciation for the importance of watching legally doesn’t always outweigh the lure of free viewing.

This is particularly true for the 31% of fans who take the pirate route when services aren’t available locally.

“SVOD services are losing out on more than £9.9 billion because of shared account access.”

This alternation between legal and illegal consumption is significantly impacting revenues on multiple levels, especially given sports broadcasts fall under tight regulation around permitted channels and regions. So, what can broadcasters do to negate the impact of sports pirates?

While VPN usage [which gives you online privacy and anonymity] remains incredibly common – 41% of UK and US internet users utilise these tools at least once per week – password and account sharing is close to replacing it at the top of the list for subscription services to address.

Netflix, for example, estimates there are 5 million households in the UK alone watching their content but not paying for it, as they share a password with a friend or family. It’s predicted SVOD services are losing out on more than £9.9 billion because of shared account access.

While blanket blocking account sharing may seem like the obvious answer, there is a strong chance this will send genuine subscribers overboard, along with those breaking the rules. Imagine you are visiting a friend for the weekend and you log in to your account to watch your favourite show, but then you forget to log out. Your friend continues to use your access once you leave and before you know it, you can’t access your paid-for content, because the service provider has read your access as switching between locations.

Instead, defences need to focus on keeping the gates open for paying users while filtering out freeloaders by leveraging effective IP intelligence. One such way could be for providers to utilise velocity tracking to assess the overall usage of an account and establish a “master account”, if you will.

Not only does this give priority to the subscriber, but it also protects you from malicious activity like Residential IPs - a de facto IP address black market, where pirates sell real IP addresses to be used without the owner’s knowledge.

“Technology for detecting unauthorised users has come a long way in recent years.”

Technology for detecting unauthorised users has come a long way in recent years, thanks in no small part to smarter use of IP data. Advanced IP vendors can pinpoint the location of individuals right down to postcode level without making them personally identifiable, thereby opening up greater opportunities to tell real and rogue viewers apart.

Constantly assessing IP entry and exit nodes can not only establish whether users are viewing specific content in approved regions, but also uncover suspicious anomalies, such as sessions that begin and end in different places.

Additionally, evaluation of velocity and different connection methods can help reveal unusual patterns, including unfeasible changes of geographic location in short time spans that may indicate more than one person is using an account login.

One other possible solution is to invest in profile building methods. This worthwhile endeavour will allow SVODs to ascertain which are the master accounts and which are more likely to be the product of shared access. There is a degree of intelligence needed to make this work correctly though, so this may require third party participation to correctly implement, manage and monitor the results.

“Only by accurately separating paying users from freeloaders can content providers beat the pirates.”

By providing real-time reports of dubious access, these approaches give sports broadcasters and distributors the capacity to make smart, informed decisions quickly. This might entail flagging potential pirates for further investigation or instantly blocking identified illegal users. Sports broadcasters in particular can benefit from such practices, as the mounting costs for rights to the biggest leagues and associations mean that they need to safeguard their pennies more so than most others.

At a time when subscriber revenues are particularly critical, it’s paramount for content defences to strike the right balance. Safeguarding broadcasting and distribution success calls for more nuanced protection and intelligent practices to analyse precisely how, and where, fans are accessing services. Only by accurately separating all-important paying users from freeloaders can content providers beat the pirates and end the circumvention game.

Charlie Johnson is VP International at global IP location specialist Digital Element.