The Los Angeles Times reports that promoters are seeking to enforce anti-piracy efforts from this Saturday’s pay-per-view between Canelo Alvarez and Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr.
Believing that PPV numbers have decreased due to piracy, Golden Boy Promotions and HBO are combating pirates. HBO has hired an anti-piracy company and are looking at live streaming products such as Facebook and Periscope which are burgeoning tools for piracy.
Notably, the Manny Pacquiao-Floyd Mayweather fight was subject to issues involving piracy. This included people taking out their cell phones and live streaming the event from the fight. Or, purchasing the pay-per-view or finding a pirated site and then streaming the television PPV from their phone.
Anti-Piracy companies have notified Facebook and Periscope about the issue and promoters are confident that they can curb the efforts to watch the $59.99 PPV for free. There are also calls for distributors to take more of an active role in stopping pirated PPVs.
Payout Perspective:
Perhaps piracy is not a reason for depressed boxing PPV numbers. There has not been a boxing PPV to reach over 1 million buys since Manny-Floyd. Most of the boxing PPVs have yielded well below 300,000 buys since Manny-Floyd. In fact, Canelo-Miguel Cotto was the last big PPV when it drew 900,000 buys in November 2015. Promoters hope to curb piracy but it is harder with new live streaming tools like Facebook Live and Periscope.
It would not be out of the realm of possibility that down the road promoters, rights fees holders and those with intellectual property interests might look to legal action for contributory infringement and/or vicarious liability. But, that might be hard to prove yet the threat of action may cause others to be more active.
Could this possibly a First Amendment issue? Maybe. A free plug for myself as next month a law review article I authored about the live streaming of sports will be in the Marquette Sports Law Review.
Leave a Reply