Above: Sports streaming sites such as StreamEast are being seized by federal officials.
Frustrated trying to watch your favorite team but can’t find the game? You are not alone. St. Ambrose senior and right-handed pitcher Hayden Kingsbury knows the feeling too. “My father and I are long-time Chicago Bulls fans and try to watch every game together. Due to this change in channels, we decided to get the antenna and try to watch the right way.
“We set everything up and turned it on, just to see that our signal was too weak to get the Chicago Home Sports Network. After finding this out, we did what everyone else would do today and pulled up the game on an illegal live stream. We returned the antenna the next day and have stuck to the illegal streams ever since.”
Watching sports today is becoming extremely frustrating and difficult due to the amount of streaming services paying for teams to only be seen on their platform. This issue has caused a lot of problems for not just viewers, but the leagues as well. According to the Harvard Business Review, the NFL was estimated to have lost around 17 million viewers during the 2023 Super Bowl to illegal live streams. Even with one of the biggest sports events of the year on a national platform, illegal websites are still eating away a chunk of revenue from the league and TV stations. A 2023 survey of 3,200 NFL fans found that 35% of respondents regularly watch NFL games on illegal streaming services.
Even with smaller events, watching your local team has only gotten harder due to this issue. Leagues like to offer their own services such as the NBA League Pass, but if you want to watch a team that plays in your area, those games are likely blacked out and only available on that teams’ local cable TV station.
If you are a Chicago Bulls fan, you no longer have the ability to turn on your cable box and go to your local TV station. They now play on the Chicago Home Sports Network, which is only available with an antenna.
Joe Turek, another SAU senior right-handed pitcher says, “Most of my favorite teams are doing pretty good this year, so they get a lot of TV coverage and are easy to watch. Unfortunately, my favorite hockey team is a different story. If I want to watch the Chicago Blackhawks, I have to use an illegal streaming service.”
Even though these illegal websites are taking away revenue for the leagues and streaming services, it is clear that fans benefit more from streaming the games illegally than they do paying for multiple streaming services.
When asked what his overall thoughts on illegal sports streams are, SAU junior infielder Caden Thode says, “I prefer them honestly. With the number of streaming platforms buying these games and events, it’s getting to be too expensive. When these platforms try to lock you into a subscription, they start to just become unaffordable.
“These platforms are also constantly rotating what they have available, making it hard to continuously pay for them after losing or gaining the show, sport or event you originally paid for. Illegal streaming websites alleviate these issues almost instantly by allowing you to watch it for free, so it is a simple solution to these problems.”
Sergio Marchizza, another SAU senior right-handed pitcher adds, “It’s actually crazy to see the evolution of illegal streaming websites considering I can still remember when my friend showed me my first website a couple years ago. Ever since then, they have always been handy to me when I don’t have a specific subscription.”
SAU athletes tell The Buzz that the most popular illegal streaming website is widely considered to be StreamEast. According to it’s website, StreamEast was founded in 2018 with the mission of giving sports fans a user-friendly and free sports streaming service. Over the past six years, they have been able to gain over 15 million monthly visitors and have continuously expanded their catalog to have a stream for every sport you can think of.
According to TechReport, US authorities have seized multiple domain names of StreamEast. When the Buzz clickedon the web site, an ominous full-screen graphic blocked the site, saying it was under federal investigation.
Despite the huge setback, StreamEast did not back down. They later took to social media and announced that their operations would continue and posted a picture of their seized home page with the caption, “Never give up. Never stop fighting. Never pay for sports.” They also revealed that the authorities made them an offer to shut down but responded saying “no offer is as good as free sports 365 days a year.”
With leagues losing revenue due to the loss in viewership, we asked what they would do if they were the Commissioner of a league and wanted to fix this issue.
Nathaniel Johnson, SAU graduate Student and left-handed pitcher says, “I think the best thing to do would be to go back to live TV channels, making it more affordable while also trying to get illegal websites taken down.”
Sergio Marchizza adds, “I think blackout restrictions need to be figured out because I’ve seen others complaining about them for years. Find what service is accessible to the majority of viewers and get more games on there.”
While all of these options may be good ideas, it is up to the leagues to reverse what they’ve done if they want to stop losing revenue. Fans say they hope to see this happen sooner rather than later, as they could benefit from sports games becoming less expensive again.
Even though fans are losing the ability to watch their favorite teams, illegal streaming services are keeping the sports communities alive by allowing them to continue viewing these events for free.
Jacob Bosse is a staff writer for The Buzz.
