Viaccess-Orca has released detailed information about live-streaming and piracy during the World Cup in Brazil.
Utilizing data gathered by Viaccess-Orca’s Eye on Piracy solution — which aids content owners and service providers in fighting piracy — the reports identify key challenges that content service providers and content owners face when delivering live television content, including sports events.
The reports, which can be downloaded at Viaccess-Orca website, are based on an anti-piracy campaign led by the company in June-July 2014. Throughout a 32-day period, Viaccess-Orca’s Eye on Piracy solution assessed content piracy during every football match across Brazil, providing comprehensive information about the illegal streams, the sources of those streams, and identifying illegal websites, all in real time.
The reports identified several important facts about piracy, including:
– The number of viewers on illegal streaming websites increased during afternoon matches compared with evening ones based on the fact that most European viewers were still at work without access to a TV set
– There were a total of 20 million viewers on illegal websites during the entire event
– Viaccess-Orca sent more than 3,200 takedown notices to pirate site owners.
– Sixty percent of the football event viewers streamed at least one match online
– Upon the start of the football competition, more than 10 new content platforms appeared among the top five link farms
Social media networks played a critical role during the football competition both in a positive and negative way. According to Twitter, there were 618,725 tweets per minute at the end of the final match, which is a social media record. However, Viaccess-Orca’s Eye on Piracy campaign identified that social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter were used by specific piracy groups and links. For example, out of 707 takedown notices sent to pirate site owners during a single football match, 51 were sent to content platforms referenced on Facebook.
Based on their analysis, Viaccess-Orca recommended that legal streaming services be made available by content rights holders in order to maximise viewing possibilities for subscribers. To optimize the quality of the viewing experience, the size of the streaming service or CDN has to be set and managed taking into consideration that certain viewing periods are busier than others and that appropriate scalability measures should also be anticipated in order to absorb any surges in demand.
The reports can be downloaded at:
