Streameast Shutdown: Impact on Illicit Sports Streaming
Hands up all you sports fans who have ever tried to catch a game on an illicit streaming site! Well, say goodbye to Streameast, the big name in illegal sports streaming. A bunch of media companies and Egyptian authorities teamed up to take it down, saying it racked up a staggering 1.6 billion visits across 80 dodgy domains in the past year. The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) called Streameast “the largest illegal sports platform anywhere.”
But here’s the kicker – unauthorized viewing of sports events tends to skyrocket in the fall when top-level club soccer and NFL games start up again. According to ACE, the site traffic to the now-defunct domains mostly came from the US, Canada, UK, Philippines, and Germany.
Streameast was a hit among American sports fans, who often saw it as a freebie alternative to paid viewing options. Last year, US Homeland Security Investigations snatched up some Streameast domains, but the crafty network operators bounced back by boasting about having a stash of over 400 websites ready to go for their streaming shenanigans.
The site admin even made a vow on Discord to shut down everything once sports become more pocket-friendly for everyone. But fast forward to last month, and Streameast loyalists were jumping between regional sites only to find the doors closed. College football season started, bringing up a wave of complaints from fans left hanging.
Those sneaky bad actors even tried to mimic Streameast’s vibe with lookalike sites, but now all roads lead to ACE’s “Watch Legally” center. In some news, a couple of guys outside Cairo got nabbed on suspicion of copyright monkey business, with authorities tracing up to $6 million back to the streams.
ACE has a track record of joining forces with Egyptian law enforcement – last year, they booted out Livehd7 and cracked down on a bunch of streaming hubs in Vietnam. But here’s the silver lining – fans rarely have to sweat it out with legal woes when rocking the pirate streams. So, cheers to the end of Streameast – a true sports streaming pirate legend is no more!
