The Underground World of Illegal Streaming
The Athletic FC Podcast
The Athletic
4.0 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 9 November 2025
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Does the rise of illegal streaming pose an existential threat to football?
To answer that question, Adam Leventhal has spent the last six months looking into the culture, crime and crisis associated with pirating live football matches.In this special episode of The Athletic FC Podcast you'll hear undercover reporting and behind the scenes access to police investigations, including how the world's largest illegal sports streaming platform was taken down.
We get the takes of match-going fans, and ask if 'Premflix' is the future of Premier League broadcasting?
If you're an Athletic subscriber you can have your say here.
And if you're not yet a subscriber, join here and have your say.
Please note that the documentary has content some listeners may find upsetting.
Host: Adam Leventhal
Mixing: Jay Beale
Producer: Abi PatersonFeaturing footage from Amazon, Sky Sports, tallkSPORT, Leaders.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic FC |
| 0:03.3 | How do you watch your Premier League football at home? |
| 0:20.6 | Yeah, kind of streaming services. |
| 0:24.1 | What sort of streaming services? |
| 0:25.9 | Cheap streaming services? |
| 0:29.3 | However much some might struggle to say the actual word, the culture of illegal |
| 0:34.7 | streaming is alive and kicking. |
| 0:37.3 | So if there are better services available elsewhere, then consume The culture of illegal streaming is alive and kicking. |
| 0:43.2 | So if there are better services available elsewhere, then consumers are going to move in that direction. |
| 0:46.1 | It's hitting the leagues and the broadcasters hard. |
| 0:49.6 | There's a big group of people fighting piracy across the region. |
| 0:52.6 | While criminals make hay, while the sun shines. |
| 0:56.0 | It was complex because of the monies that they were making and the concept of how they work together. |
| 0:58.7 | And it presents a crisis for football. |
| 1:01.5 | Sports piracy poses an existential threat. |
| 1:04.4 | I'm Adam Leventhal, senior writer and broadcaster from The Athletic, |
| 1:08.4 | and for the last six months I've been looking into the underground world of illegal streaming, the culture, the crime and the crisis. So do you think |
| 1:17.1 | that's more and more common nowadays? No one my age is paying 80 plus to watch football. I think |
| 1:22.7 | the fragmentation makes people stream illegally way more. I'd rather pay $10 a month for an IPTV service just to catch |
| 1:29.3 | all the games. Illegal streaming is a complex issue. Someone described it to me as being like an |
| 1:34.4 | onion with layer after layer. If you're not familiar with it, illegal streaming or piracy means the |
| 1:40.8 | online consumption of games without the copyright owner's permission, |
... |
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