The number of illegal streams of sports events in Britain has more than doubled to 3.6bn in the past three years according to a new report, which provides a stark illustration of the challenge facing broadcasters and leagues in combating piracy.
The Campaign for Fairer Gambling’s national 2024-25 report also highlights that there is a symbiotic relationship between sports piracy and unlicensed gambling, with 89% of illegal streams in this country featuring adverts for black-market bookmakers.
Illegal betting has exploded over the past four years with unlicensed operators earning £379m in the first half of 2025, giving them 9% of Britain’s £8.2bn online gambling marketplace, a huge increase on their 2% market share in 2022.
The number of illegal streams has also grown from 1.8bn in 2022 to 3.6bn last year according to the CFG report, to be published on Thursday, which was produced by the online marketplace intelligence platform Yield Sec. In comparison a Yield Sec report on the US market for 2024 identified 4.2bn streams of sports events in a far bigger country, with the prevalence of illegal streaming around four times bigger in the UK.
The report argues that sports streaming is being deliberately used to take illegal gambling into the mainstream, having been developed initially to target heavy loss-making punters and vulnerable individuals excluded by the regulated industry.
“Unlicensed gambling is by far the largest and most prevalent ‘media partner’ to the criminal business of illegal streaming of sports events,” said Ismail Vali, founder of Yield Sec.
“For the first time, illegal gambling’s focus upon two core audiences in Great Britain – the underage and self-excluded gamblers on the GamStop scheme – looks set to shift into mainstream audiences via the gateway of illegal streaming of sports events.
“When illegal gambling becomes the commercial engine behind the theft of premium sports content, the explanation is clear: it is because crime can make money from it. What does crime do with all of the money it takes by stealing from sports rights holders? It makes more crime.”
In the budget last autumn Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, announced £26m in funding for the Gambling Commission to help combat the black market, but CFG argues the regulator has underestimated the extent of the problem. There are also concerns within the industry that tax changes to be introduced in April, specifically the increase of online gaming duty from 21% to 40%, will further fuel the growth of unlicensed operators.
“Britain is becoming a soft touch,” said Derek Webb, a multimillionaire former professional poker player and Labour donor who founded and funds the CFG. “We have allowed the global soft power of sport to be infected by organised criminality. Online gambling operators were irrationally permitted to stay offshore under the flawed 2005 Gambling Act, and this acceptance of offshoring enabled the theoretical excuse to justify black-market operations.
“The Gambling Commission and the Betting and Gaming Council both ignored advice concerning the black market for many years. The Treasury has now provided funding to the Gambling Commission to enforce against illegal operators, but their understanding is insufficient.”
As well as being the country’s most valuable competition, with around £12bn in TV rights deals globally of which £6.7bn is from the UK, Premier League clubs also have lucrative partnerships with licensed gambling companies so are hit by piracy on both fronts.
During the 2024-25 season the Premier League’s anti-piracy team succeeded in removing more than 230,000 live streams from social media platforms and more than 430,000 copyright-infringing links from Google, but the new report shows the scale of the problem it is facing.
