16 ms·

Assuming that "piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem" is still the prevailing wisdom, what is Spain / La Liga doing wrong that sports piracy is so

by llbbdd 6mo ago

Assuming that "piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem" is still the prevailing wisdom, what is Spain / La Liga doing wrong that sports piracy is so prevalent as to warrant this? It seems like a no-brainer to expand stream availability and charge appropriately for it vs. scheduling daily kneecaps of other economic activity.

estebank 6mo ago
LaLiga has the same kind of attitude and culture as the RIAA. Interpret their words and actions accordingly.
- llbbdd 6mo ago
  That's kind of what I mean. From like 2000-2010 in the US, you could find Napster or Limewire icons on the desktops of people who would self-describe as not-a-computer-person. Conveniences like iTunes->iPod and streaming services like Spotify did a lot to depress the popularity of music piracy for a decade+ after that, though it seems to have made a bit of a comeback recently, apparently as a result of streaming services losing licensing rights and generally tightening the belts on their services. You could almost argue that the RIAA's (abhorrent, yes) behavior created the vacuum for new services that competed with piracy legally. I don't know much about them but it seems like part of the problem might be that LaLiga is acting both as the distributor and enforcer? e.g. Universal Music Group might be among the RIAA members, but that doesn't stop UMG from having a distribution relationship with Spotify if it benefits them more to capture those sales directly vs. depending on the RIAA to be a legal watchdog. If all LaLiga has to do is lean on existing infrastructure to block sites that bother them, they'd seem to have no similar incentive to provide better paid service.
  - embedding-shape 6mo ago
    > From like 2000-2010 in the US, you could find Napster or Limewire icons on the desktops of people who would self-describe as not-a-computer-person. Which, just to add some context, is exactly how people/groups who want to watch football at home does with football streams today in 2026 in Spain, except now also with a VPN of course. Regular football fans who have no idea how/why these streams work or where they're coming from and couldn't tell you the difference between a website and a desktop application, know the website addresses and the know-to about how to access them. Which is why you're seeing the reaction from La Liga and the courts. > problem might be that LaLiga is acting both as the distributor and enforcer? Isn't this true in movies and other areas too? HBO and other distributors send DMCA requests left and right like everyone else, as far as I can tell, aren't they too then "the distributor and enforcer" or is that different somehow?
    - llbbdd 6mo ago
      Thank you for the context, that makes sense and helps explain how it's so popular. > Isn't this true in movies and other areas too? That's a good point, though now I wonder if there's something particular to the content being live vs. VOD. By the time a DMCA request or equivalent pulls through for live content it might be too late to prevent the primary "theft" of the stream's value, vs. a movie distributed by HBO that has a longer tail of interest.
torben-friis 6mo ago
Football in Spain is usually sold by what used to be cable tv (now a mix of cable + Netflix-like streaming). Usually to get access to matches you need the most expensive package, which includes a bajillion services and might even be tied to a cell/internet provider. Footbal is their "killer feature" that enables 200 euro subscriptions. They also sell "business access", so pubs can show the match, since going to the bar for a beer is the go-to choice for those who can't afford to watch at home.
- llbbdd 6mo ago
  This makes sense and the structure is similar to how sports packages are sold on US tv providers. It's getting somewhat better with more sports being streamed on big providers like Amazon but you more or less still have to pay out the ass and have to deal with local/national market exclusivity deals that make certain games unavailable. I guess the question I'd have then is the economics of the pirate providers; I'm assuming that they have their own infrastructure costs to provide the streams at any level of reliability. Do they charge some nominal amount for access so that people who aren't willing to pay the full 200 euros for the top-tier official package can get just the sports games a la carte?
  - embedding-shape 6mo ago
    > Do they charge some nominal amount for access The ones I've seen in wide use literally are "load page, click on Stream 1, it starts, if it breaks/looks shit, click on Stream 2 and repeat until good stream found", and also filled with ads, so I'm guessing they mostly run on ad-money. Most visitors aren't really technically inclined, I think I've lost count how many times I've helped people install ad-blockers once they try to get a stream running while a group of people are waiting.
  - torben-friis 6mo ago
    >Do they charge some nominal amount for access so that people who aren't willing to pay the full 200 euros for the top-tier official package can get just the sports games a la carte? Not usually, it's more like a 90's porn website setup, where you're going to click in a ton of fake links and close popups for a while until you reach a 720p stream. Think that it's usually a bunch of very temporary services that popup and are taken down quickly, as well as a bunch of not-technically-pirate-themselves hubs that link to the former. There's not enough stability to set up payments, which are also traceable. Anti piracy measures are crazy though. La liga has gone as far as to listen in microphones on user's apps in the hopes of catching hidden audio tones that, crossed with geolocation, allow them to detect streaming spots. It's like gamers with anti cheat, a situation where the measures are both technically impressive and absurd overreach in a legal/moral sense.
raincole 6mo ago
> "piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem" I never buy into this. If copyright law doesn't exist, pirate sites will eventually always provide better service than the official channels. One example is scanlation manga. Chinese scanlation sites have reached the theoretical ceiling of service: just serve images fast with a little nonintrusive ad. No login required. No way the official Japanese apps can provide significant better service than that.
- Retr0id 6mo ago
  But copyright law does exist?
  - themafia 6mo ago
    The pirates still exist. The legitimate users are punished. Might as well abandon the law.
    - Retr0id 6mo ago
      DRM is effective(ish) because of both technical and legal mechanisms. Without the legal mechanisms they'd ramp up the technical ones, which might end up even worse for legitimate users.
      - themafia 6mo ago
        DRM is completely ineffective. It simply increases the cost of "piracy," as well as legitimate actions like home backup, to about $200 USD. The worse they make it for legitimate users the more likely they are to just buy the necessary device and move on. The technical battle is not some limitless option that IP owners get to use, it eventually impinges on their core interests.
        nradov 6mo ago
        DRM is somewhat effective. I'm lazy enough about entertainment that I don't even bother with piracy. If content providers don't want to make it cheap and easy for me to watch then fuck 'em, I'll watch something else. I have a zillion other options.
opengrass 6mo ago
Piracy is for teenagers and poor people.
- bix6 6mo ago
  How many middle class families can legitimately afford an extra $100/mo+ on multiple streaming services?
  - opengrass 6mo ago
    $100 is unheard of in Europe.
    - bix6 6mo ago
      Netflix, Disney, HBO, Amazon, Apple, Movistar, DAZN. $100/mo estimate for that combo in Spain.
      - opengrass 6mo ago
        I see, we're talking combos now. The lowest end Moviestar package with soccer is 9 Euro.
        bix6 6mo ago
        Correct, I said “multiple” in my original post. I don’t doubt you can watch one stream for 9 Euro. What happens when the game you want is with the other provider?
      - geodel 6mo ago
        If watching this much videos from such large array of services is that important for a family I am sure they can easily cut down on other leisure and entertainment and come up just fine.
        watwut 6mo ago
bix6 6mo ago
Is it not a pricing problem? Spotify is relatively cheap and has all the music. For the same video coverage I need 5+ streaming services that all increase prices significantly faster than inflation. This is just private equity over squeezing?
mrtksn 6mo ago
This seems like they are aiming to increase profit margins instead of increasing the supply and decreasing the price. Considering that increasing the supply is trivial in digital products, maybe they are competing in a saturated market? Spaniards attitudes can be quite different from the American ones, Americans just pay for everything for convenience, in Spain you probably need to match the price of the IPTV to steal their customers. Apparently IPTV costs 20 to 60 Euros per year, the legal option is over 100 euros per month. To match the IPTV they need 20x price reduction. This would mean that they need sign in 20x more Spaniards to break even with the current situation. Are there 20x more Spaniards pirating the LaLiga than paying? Even in Spain I don’t think so.
- Swizec 6mo ago
  > This would mean that they need sign in 20x more Spaniards to break even with the current situation. Are there 20x more Spaniards pirating the LaLiga than paying? Even in Spain I don’t think so. Is it possible the product just isn’t worth the price they want to charge? Entirely likely. On average at population scale, people are shockingly good at voting with their wallets.
  - mrtksn 6mo ago
    I agree, maybe people who play with a ball and their managers should get a pay cut instead of trying to optimize revenue streams through draconian measures.
- fluoridation 6mo ago
  > Apparently IPTV costs 20 to 60 Euros per year, the legal option is over 100 euros per month. To match the IPTV they need 20x price reduction. Uh... Huh? How is EUR 20 * 20 approximately EUR 100?
  - mrtksn 6mo ago
    If you do the maths correctly it’s in that range, roughly. (100*12 months) = 1200 euros/year 1200/60 = 20 so 20x difference between the most expensive IPTV and the cheapest legal option. You can go with the 20 EUR IPTV vs the 200 EUR legal option and it would be 120x difference but probably the quality would be the same so let’s stick with the 20x.
Manuel_D 6mo ago
Piracy isn't a service problem. Many people just want to consume media for free. It's true that poor service can exacerbate piracy, but even a good service isn't enough to dissuade pirates. Games that are completely convenient to download on Steam are still pirated. Some people are pushed to pirate on account of bad service, sure. But plenty of others are more than willing to tolerate worse service to receive a product for free.
- PowerElectronix 6mo ago
  You are always going to find fringe users that would pirate everything no matter what. Hours of search, bad quality, bad audio? They don't care, they rather watch that shit than pay a buck for it. But they are fringe, an anomaly. Most people will happily pay for stuff if it's confortable enough. Don't focus on the tail end of the human behavior distribution. Steam makes a lot of money, the devs publishing there, too. Spotify makes a lot of money. Netflix makes a lot of money... Piracy is easily reduced to anecdotical as soon as you don't offer absolute shit service for a lot of money, as LaLiga does.
  - Manuel_D 6mo ago
    To the contrary, data suggests that games lose about 20% of sales if they're cracked on day 1. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/10/the-true-cost-of-game-piracy-20-percent-of-revenue-according-to-a-new-study/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/10/the-true-cost-of-game... Good service is still hard to compete with zero cost.
Aurornis 6mo ago
> Assuming that "piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem" is still the prevailing wisdom I don't have experience with broadcast media (in Spain, especially) but I a little experience on the software side: I could not believe the lengths some people would go to in order to avoid paying even $5-10 for useful software. Hours of work, sketchy cracks, downloading things from websites likely to compromise their system. Some of them would become irate when the software was updated and broke their cracks, spending time complaining loudly on forums and social media or even trying to threaten developers. The strangest part is when they start posting from social media where you can see things like their $3,000 gaming PC build, but if they see a chance to avoid paying $10-20 for something they will take it. It becomes culturally embedded in some bubbles: If it's possible to find a way to avoid paying and there are no consequences for trying, some people will go for it. I don't even buy the "it's a service problem" argument either. I have a friend who loves to watch sports games but refused to pay for any services. He will spend 30 minutes jumping from one website to the next enduring crazy amounts of ads, pop-ups, and attempts to get him to install things on his computer until finally getting to a blocky stream that drops out every few minutes. He can easily afford to pay, but getting things without paying is basically a little game he likes to play.
- dfxm12 6mo ago
  Sometimes it's not just $5. It's $5, creating an account, handing over personal info, getting on a mailing list, agreeing to who knows what in a TOS, etc. Specifically, gamers look for cracks to allow them to play single player games offline. I don't doubt that some people are cheap, but there are lots of reasons aside from the price.
- quacked 6mo ago
  It's a service problem. Every new service is a colossal headache to set up payment, remember to cancel payment if you only wanted to see the single event and have no need for the service the rest of the year, find what's playing on what when, deal with their bullshit when they add ads onto an ad-free plan that you bought only because it was ad-free, yadda yadda yadda. The suits could have had 10x as much money out of me if I could just pay one-time prices. "Sure, fork over $10 and you can have a temporary account to watch the US Open this year." I will do that. In a single month I'll pay twice the cost of a monthly NYT subscription to read online articles, maybe $0.50/pop. But they don't offer that, they offer difficult-to-cancel ad-laden plans that don't even get you access to the content you want to see reliably (edit: and as another commenters, signs you up to in some cases multiple mailing lists--thanks, The Athletic, for having a separate mailing list for every one of your terrible sub-orgs, I deeply regret paying you a dime). I'll be sailing the seven seas as long as it's viable.
deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
pfortuny 6mo ago
Monopoly: It is not just "LaLiga" who stands to lose money, it is Telefonica/Movistar which is the only owner of most of sports right in Spain, and they know they can set the price they want because + Most people are not savy enough to pirate/are unwilling to do it for fear. + The more fear they instil, the keener those people are to pay. + Most bars where it is available will rise prices to sustain their loss. It starts at 300Eu/(month screen) (notice the product in the denominator), and having. + Woe to you if you own a bar and the police get you pirating. Woe indeed, the fine will be unimaginable... Monopoly does this to the markets. Movistar (Telefonica) is the de-facto owner of high-stakes sports in Spain. This means Football (Spanish league, Champions League), Tennis (all the Masters and Grand Slams), Basketball, you name it. They are also the main telco in Spain, so they own the service and the channel.
nish__ 6mo ago
They don't stream on YouTube.
walletdrainer 6mo ago
It’s very easy to watch pirated streams, it’s insanely complicated to reliably watch the official streams.

by llbbdd 6mo ago

estebank 6mo ago

LaLiga has the same kind of attitude and culture as the RIAA. Interpret their words and actions accordingly.

llbbdd 6mo ago
That's kind of what I mean. From like 2000-2010 in the US, you could find Napster or Limewire icons on the desktops of people who would self-describe as not-a-computer-person. Conveniences like iTunes->iPod and streaming services like Spotify did a lot to depress the popularity of music piracy for a decade+ after that, though it seems to have made a bit of a comeback recently, apparently as a result of streaming services losing licensing rights and generally tightening the belts on their services. You could almost argue that the RIAA's (abhorrent, yes) behavior created the vacuum for new services that competed with piracy legally. I don't know much about them but it seems like part of the problem might be that LaLiga is acting both as the distributor and enforcer? e.g. Universal Music Group might be among the RIAA members, but that doesn't stop UMG from having a distribution relationship with Spotify if it benefits them more to capture those sales directly vs. depending on the RIAA to be a legal watchdog. If all LaLiga has to do is lean on existing infrastructure to block sites that bother them, they'd seem to have no similar incentive to provide better paid service.
- embedding-shape 6mo ago
  > From like 2000-2010 in the US, you could find Napster or Limewire icons on the desktops of people who would self-describe as not-a-computer-person. Which, just to add some context, is exactly how people/groups who want to watch football at home does with football streams today in 2026 in Spain, except now also with a VPN of course. Regular football fans who have no idea how/why these streams work or where they're coming from and couldn't tell you the difference between a website and a desktop application, know the website addresses and the know-to about how to access them. Which is why you're seeing the reaction from La Liga and the courts. > problem might be that LaLiga is acting both as the distributor and enforcer? Isn't this true in movies and other areas too? HBO and other distributors send DMCA requests left and right like everyone else, as far as I can tell, aren't they too then "the distributor and enforcer" or is that different somehow?
  - llbbdd 6mo ago
    Thank you for the context, that makes sense and helps explain how it's so popular. > Isn't this true in movies and other areas too? That's a good point, though now I wonder if there's something particular to the content being live vs. VOD. By the time a DMCA request or equivalent pulls through for live content it might be too late to prevent the primary "theft" of the stream's value, vs. a movie distributed by HBO that has a longer tail of interest.

torben-friis 6mo ago

Football in Spain is usually sold by what used to be cable tv (now a mix of cable + Netflix-like streaming). Usually to get access to matches you need the most expensive package, which includes a bajillion services and might even be tied to a cell/internet provider. Footbal is their "killer feature" that enables 200 euro subscriptions. They also sell "business access", so pubs can show the match, since going to the bar for a beer is the go-to choice for those who can't afford to watch at home.

llbbdd 6mo ago
This makes sense and the structure is similar to how sports packages are sold on US tv providers. It's getting somewhat better with more sports being streamed on big providers like Amazon but you more or less still have to pay out the ass and have to deal with local/national market exclusivity deals that make certain games unavailable. I guess the question I'd have then is the economics of the pirate providers; I'm assuming that they have their own infrastructure costs to provide the streams at any level of reliability. Do they charge some nominal amount for access so that people who aren't willing to pay the full 200 euros for the top-tier official package can get just the sports games a la carte?
- embedding-shape 6mo ago
  > Do they charge some nominal amount for access The ones I've seen in wide use literally are "load page, click on Stream 1, it starts, if it breaks/looks shit, click on Stream 2 and repeat until good stream found", and also filled with ads, so I'm guessing they mostly run on ad-money. Most visitors aren't really technically inclined, I think I've lost count how many times I've helped people install ad-blockers once they try to get a stream running while a group of people are waiting.
- torben-friis 6mo ago
  >Do they charge some nominal amount for access so that people who aren't willing to pay the full 200 euros for the top-tier official package can get just the sports games a la carte? Not usually, it's more like a 90's porn website setup, where you're going to click in a ton of fake links and close popups for a while until you reach a 720p stream. Think that it's usually a bunch of very temporary services that popup and are taken down quickly, as well as a bunch of not-technically-pirate-themselves hubs that link to the former. There's not enough stability to set up payments, which are also traceable. Anti piracy measures are crazy though. La liga has gone as far as to listen in microphones on user's apps in the hopes of catching hidden audio tones that, crossed with geolocation, allow them to detect streaming spots. It's like gamers with anti cheat, a situation where the measures are both technically impressive and absurd overreach in a legal/moral sense.

raincole 6mo ago

> "piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem" I never buy into this. If copyright law doesn't exist, pirate sites will eventually always provide better service than the official channels. One example is scanlation manga. Chinese scanlation sites have reached the theoretical ceiling of service: just serve images fast with a little nonintrusive ad. No login required. No way the official Japanese apps can provide significant better service than that.

Retr0id 6mo ago
But copyright law does exist?
- themafia 6mo ago
  The pirates still exist. The legitimate users are punished. Might as well abandon the law.
  - Retr0id 6mo ago
    DRM is effective(ish) because of both technical and legal mechanisms. Without the legal mechanisms they'd ramp up the technical ones, which might end up even worse for legitimate users.
    - themafia 6mo ago
      DRM is completely ineffective. It simply increases the cost of "piracy," as well as legitimate actions like home backup, to about $200 USD. The worse they make it for legitimate users the more likely they are to just buy the necessary device and move on. The technical battle is not some limitless option that IP owners get to use, it eventually impinges on their core interests.
      - nradov 6mo ago
        DRM is somewhat effective. I'm lazy enough about entertainment that I don't even bother with piracy. If content providers don't want to make it cheap and easy for me to watch then fuck 'em, I'll watch something else. I have a zillion other options.

opengrass 6mo ago

Piracy is for teenagers and poor people.

bix6 6mo ago
How many middle class families can legitimately afford an extra $100/mo+ on multiple streaming services?
- opengrass 6mo ago
  $100 is unheard of in Europe.
  - bix6 6mo ago
    Netflix, Disney, HBO, Amazon, Apple, Movistar, DAZN. $100/mo estimate for that combo in Spain.
    - opengrass 6mo ago
      I see, we're talking combos now. The lowest end Moviestar package with soccer is 9 Euro.
      - bix6 6mo ago
        Correct, I said “multiple” in my original post. I don’t doubt you can watch one stream for 9 Euro. What happens when the game you want is with the other provider?
    - geodel 6mo ago
      If watching this much videos from such large array of services is that important for a family I am sure they can easily cut down on other leisure and entertainment and come up just fine.
      - watwut 6mo ago

bix6 6mo ago

Is it not a pricing problem? Spotify is relatively cheap and has all the music. For the same video coverage I need 5+ streaming services that all increase prices significantly faster than inflation. This is just private equity over squeezing?

mrtksn 6mo ago

This seems like they are aiming to increase profit margins instead of increasing the supply and decreasing the price. Considering that increasing the supply is trivial in digital products, maybe they are competing in a saturated market? Spaniards attitudes can be quite different from the American ones, Americans just pay for everything for convenience, in Spain you probably need to match the price of the IPTV to steal their customers. Apparently IPTV costs 20 to 60 Euros per year, the legal option is over 100 euros per month. To match the IPTV they need 20x price reduction. This would mean that they need sign in 20x more Spaniards to break even with the current situation. Are there 20x more Spaniards pirating the LaLiga than paying? Even in Spain I don’t think so.

Swizec 6mo ago
> This would mean that they need sign in 20x more Spaniards to break even with the current situation. Are there 20x more Spaniards pirating the LaLiga than paying? Even in Spain I don’t think so. Is it possible the product just isn’t worth the price they want to charge? Entirely likely. On average at population scale, people are shockingly good at voting with their wallets.
- mrtksn 6mo ago
  I agree, maybe people who play with a ball and their managers should get a pay cut instead of trying to optimize revenue streams through draconian measures.
fluoridation 6mo ago
> Apparently IPTV costs 20 to 60 Euros per year, the legal option is over 100 euros per month. To match the IPTV they need 20x price reduction. Uh... Huh? How is EUR 20 * 20 approximately EUR 100?
- mrtksn 6mo ago
  If you do the maths correctly it’s in that range, roughly. (100*12 months) = 1200 euros/year 1200/60 = 20 so 20x difference between the most expensive IPTV and the cheapest legal option. You can go with the 20 EUR IPTV vs the 200 EUR legal option and it would be 120x difference but probably the quality would be the same so let’s stick with the 20x.

Manuel_D 6mo ago

Piracy isn't a service problem. Many people just want to consume media for free. It's true that poor service can exacerbate piracy, but even a good service isn't enough to dissuade pirates. Games that are completely convenient to download on Steam are still pirated. Some people are pushed to pirate on account of bad service, sure. But plenty of others are more than willing to tolerate worse service to receive a product for free.

PowerElectronix 6mo ago
You are always going to find fringe users that would pirate everything no matter what. Hours of search, bad quality, bad audio? They don't care, they rather watch that shit than pay a buck for it. But they are fringe, an anomaly. Most people will happily pay for stuff if it's confortable enough. Don't focus on the tail end of the human behavior distribution. Steam makes a lot of money, the devs publishing there, too. Spotify makes a lot of money. Netflix makes a lot of money... Piracy is easily reduced to anecdotical as soon as you don't offer absolute shit service for a lot of money, as LaLiga does.
- Manuel_D 6mo ago
  To the contrary, data suggests that games lose about 20% of sales if they're cracked on day 1. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/10/the-true-cost-of-game-piracy-20-percent-of-revenue-according-to-a-new-study/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/10/the-true-cost-of-game... Good service is still hard to compete with zero cost.

Aurornis 6mo ago

> Assuming that "piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem" is still the prevailing wisdom I don't have experience with broadcast media (in Spain, especially) but I a little experience on the software side: I could not believe the lengths some people would go to in order to avoid paying even $5-10 for useful software. Hours of work, sketchy cracks, downloading things from websites likely to compromise their system. Some of them would become irate when the software was updated and broke their cracks, spending time complaining loudly on forums and social media or even trying to threaten developers. The strangest part is when they start posting from social media where you can see things like their $3,000 gaming PC build, but if they see a chance to avoid paying $10-20 for something they will take it. It becomes culturally embedded in some bubbles: If it's possible to find a way to avoid paying and there are no consequences for trying, some people will go for it. I don't even buy the "it's a service problem" argument either. I have a friend who loves to watch sports games but refused to pay for any services. He will spend 30 minutes jumping from one website to the next enduring crazy amounts of ads, pop-ups, and attempts to get him to install things on his computer until finally getting to a blocky stream that drops out every few minutes. He can easily afford to pay, but getting things without paying is basically a little game he likes to play.

dfxm12 6mo ago
Sometimes it's not just $5. It's $5, creating an account, handing over personal info, getting on a mailing list, agreeing to who knows what in a TOS, etc. Specifically, gamers look for cracks to allow them to play single player games offline. I don't doubt that some people are cheap, but there are lots of reasons aside from the price.
quacked 6mo ago
It's a service problem. Every new service is a colossal headache to set up payment, remember to cancel payment if you only wanted to see the single event and have no need for the service the rest of the year, find what's playing on what when, deal with their bullshit when they add ads onto an ad-free plan that you bought only because it was ad-free, yadda yadda yadda. The suits could have had 10x as much money out of me if I could just pay one-time prices. "Sure, fork over $10 and you can have a temporary account to watch the US Open this year." I will do that. In a single month I'll pay twice the cost of a monthly NYT subscription to read online articles, maybe $0.50/pop. But they don't offer that, they offer difficult-to-cancel ad-laden plans that don't even get you access to the content you want to see reliably (edit: and as another commenters, signs you up to in some cases multiple mailing lists--thanks, The Athletic, for having a separate mailing list for every one of your terrible sub-orgs, I deeply regret paying you a dime). I'll be sailing the seven seas as long as it's viable.

deleted 6mo ago

[deleted]

pfortuny 6mo ago

Monopoly: It is not just "LaLiga" who stands to lose money, it is Telefonica/Movistar which is the only owner of most of sports right in Spain, and they know they can set the price they want because + Most people are not savy enough to pirate/are unwilling to do it for fear. + The more fear they instil, the keener those people are to pay. + Most bars where it is available will rise prices to sustain their loss. It starts at 300Eu/(month screen) (notice the product in the denominator), and having. + Woe to you if you own a bar and the police get you pirating. Woe indeed, the fine will be unimaginable... Monopoly does this to the markets. Movistar (Telefonica) is the de-facto owner of high-stakes sports in Spain. This means Football (Spanish league, Champions League), Tennis (all the Masters and Grand Slams), Basketball, you name it. They are also the main telco in Spain, so they own the service and the channel.

nish__ 6mo ago

They don't stream on YouTube.

walletdrainer 6mo ago

It’s very easy to watch pirated streams, it’s insanely complicated to reliably watch the official streams.