Job growth is slowing down. From Marketplace, I'm Sabri Beneshore in for David Brancaccio.

Stream East was a streaming platform for sports. Games were free to watch, and the whole thing was very illegal.

Stream East has now been shut down after a sting operation by law enforcement in Egypt.

According to the Media Trade Group Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment,

1.6 billion people visited Stream East domains in the last year

for free access to games at the NFL, the NBA, top global soccer leagues.

But as Marketplace Savannah Peters report, sports fans were drawn to

stream-aist by more than just the fact that it was free.

Independent sports writer June Lee pays for every major streaming service that offers live

sports. The annual price tag, over $2,600. That is the cost of being a hardcore sports fan in 2025.

Back when Cable was king, Lee says he could have gotten the same access behind just one paywall.

But in the streaming era, leagues can make more money slicing and dicing their media rights

and selling them to multiple services.

I often find myself struggling to figure out what channel the games are on, and it's literally

my job to be able to watch the games.

Even for fans who are willing to shell out, Lee says keeping up with a team the legal way

has gotten onerous.

You go on streammease.com, and regardless of what network the game is on, it's going to be there.

It's just more simple.

According to the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, that platform had the broadest reach among illegal streamers.

Larissa Knapp is a VP with that organization.

If there's friction in the system where they can't see, you know, in a legal game through

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