Study Suggests Illegal Sports Streaming Boosts Black Market Gambling
A new report commissioned by the Campaign for Fairer Gambling (CFG) and produced by Yield Sec reveals that illegal sports streaming has become a significant gateway into the $67 billion online illicit gambling economy in the US. These platforms profit from illegally broadcasting copyrighted sports content and direct users to criminal digital ecosystems.
The study determined that people in the US accessed over 4.2 billion illegal sports streams in 2024. Approximately 82% of these were found to be promoting unregulated gambling websites instead of our best sports betting sites.
"One-third of Americans consumed pirated content in 2023, and nearly half of Americans have consumed pirated content at some point in their lives," the study reveals.
The report highlights the cybercrime risks posed by such platforms. An estimated 84% of illegal streams included malware, spyware, or keylogging software capable of harvesting sensitive user information. This exposure makes casual viewers vulnerable to identity theft and broader cybersecurity breaches.
The impact on professional sports leagues and legitimate broadcasters has been profound, with revenue losses tied directly to this form of digital piracy. CFG founder Derek Webb described the situation as "a dark nexus" of global tech crime, emphasizing the scale of the threat by comparing the $67 billion illicit market to America's trade deficit, larger than with all but six countries.
Webb called for immediate government intervention to disrupt this evolving threat.
Calls for the US to block piracy sites
Webb is not the only one who wants action against illegal sports live streams. In the Blocking Access to Foreign Piracy Sites: A long-Overdue Task for Congress report, Rodrigo Balbontin explains that the US leads the world in pirate sites and that global visits to these sites increased by 22% from 2018 to 2021.
Illicit Protocol Television (IPTV) generated $1 billion in annual subscriptions in 2020, while pirate services offering free movies and TV shows brought in $1.3 billion in 2021. The report encourages lawmakers to pass laws that allow internet service providers to block sites offering pirated content, such as illegal sports streaming.
Legalization without enforcement exacerbates harm
In a follow-up to its 2024 USA National Online Gambling Report, the CFG also recently released new findings indicating that partial legalization of online gambling, absent robust enforcement against illegal operators, may worsen consumer harm. The supplement, developed in partnership with Yield Sec, offers a detailed comparison of online gambling behaviors across all 50 US states.
The report categorizes states into three regulatory types: no legal online gambling, legalized solely for online sports betting, and legalized for both the best sportsbook operators and real money online casinos. By converting gross gambling revenue (GGR) per capita into a proportion of average income, the study provides a baseline for assessing gambling loss exposure to consumers in 2024.
The states that lacked legislative internet gambling had the lowest per capita GGR at 0.31% of revenues. States with legal internet sports betting increased that to 0.77%, and states with internet sports betting and casino games had a higher average of 1.12%.
