Super Bowl 2025 will be the most legally watched U. S. spread in 2025.
It might also be the most improperly watched movie.
Super Bowl LIX may serve as a catalyst for lawmakers to modernize the outdated legal framework that governs streaming as creators of life sports willing struggle to stop illegal streaming and as the major U.S. tech companies have become genuine distributors of life sports.
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act ( DMCA ), which President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1998, provides that framework. The DMCA was passed into law in the mid-1990s as many people used landline telephone connections to connect to the Internet. MLB wasn’t the first professional sports league to dwell supply a regular season game online until 2002, and WiFi wasn’t widespread in homes until the mid-1900s. It would be another century before” streaming” became a popular way in which customers watched information, mainly life activities.
The DMCA certifies content authors that all online information is protected by copyright laws. But, the DMCA features some restrictions that weaken that security. One limitation is DMCA’s safe harbor to online service providers ( OSPs ), including cloud service providers, search engines, and social media sites such as YouTube and Facebook. So long as OSPs “expeditiously” reduce or stop an illegitimate channel after receiving “proper warning of claimed infringement”, OSPs are not liable for the supply.
DMCA doesn’t clarify what counts as “expeditiously”, and OSPs can take hours or days before acting—if they act at all.
The value in their creation is highest when it is “live,” according to creators of live sports content. A replay or replay of a game that was played minutes, hours, or days ago is typically not as valuable because it accurately captures something that already happened. Additionally, moments after the play ends, highlights of plays from games are frequently posted on social media and other platforms.
In recent years, sports leagues have urged Congress, the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office, and the U. S. Copyright Office, among others with authority over intellectual property, to reconsider this model.
In 2023, leading attorneys for several leagues—Riché T. McKnight ( UFC), Ayala Deutsch ( NBA Properties ) and Dolores F. DiBella ( NFL Properties ) —wrote a letter to the USPTO arguing that illegal streaming of their broadcasts costs them and their athletes billions of dollars in revenue. According to a recent study,$ 28 billion in lost revenue annually is the result of illegal streaming. The U. S. ranks first in visits to piracy sites, with 11 % of all unlicensed streaming demand stemming from sports.
The lost revenue not only impacts billionaire owners and millionaire players, the leagues say, but also employees who work in more ordinary positions, including in operations, security, food service and public relations.
UFC COO Lawrence Epstein stated in a phone interview that” we need to pass legislation that will put teeth into the’ expeditious’ removal language ] from the DMCA so that it will reflect the realities of live sports content. ” The language, as it sits today, is designed for a Friends episode produced 20 years ago. The request to remove that episode would be made back in the day, and it would be removed three days later. In a live sporting event where the value of the content is so precious and declines after it ends, that approach makes no sense.
Those who stream also run the risk of losing their privacy. Accessing an illegal stream can result in the theft of login credentials, credit card information, and other risks posed by malware, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
State-level actors and large organized crime syndicates have also been linked to unlicensed video offerings, according to Eric Elbaz, principal strategic engagement manager at Akamai, a cybersecurity and cloud company.
And as piracy schemes become more sophisticated, some visitors may not be aware that they are getting into an unlicensed feed. Elbaz claimed that the development of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies has made it even simpler to launch and monetize numerous websites. In particular, unlicensed providers have discovered workarounds to boosting their Google search exposure for piracy sites despite delisting efforts.
” Honestly, that somewhat shocked me—how quickly emergent technology is becoming available and how quickly it’s being leveraged by these syndicates”, Elbaz said.
Last year, Super Bowl LVIII drew 123.7 million viewers, the most-watched TV program in history. It also attracted nearly twice as many viewers as the second-most watched program in 2024, the second presidential debate ( 67.1 million ).
Although it’s safe to assume that there are many millions of people watching Super Bowl LVIII illegally, the number is less certain. More than 12 million people watched the 2, 650 illegal streams of Super Bowl LIV in 2020, according to piracy tracking company VFT Solutions, which found the streams illegally in the country. That figure increased to 17 million in 2024. Other data points point to a large number of illegal streamers. In 2022, VPNOverview estimated that 7.7 million people looked for Super Bowl LVI streaming options.
In addition to adjusting definitions for what ought to count as “expeditious” given modern technology, Epstein also sees the need for Congress to consider site blocking requirements.
” What happens is, there are these serial pirates. Illegal piracy is literally their job, it’s how they make money”, Epstein noted. ” We see the same perpetrators repeatedly. We need to find ways to address repeat offenders so that it is required that they don’t reappear on platforms.
From 2010 to 2012, Congress attempted to pass several anti-piracy laws, including the Stop Online Piracy Act ( SOPA ), the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act ( COICA ), and the Protect IP Act ( PIPA ).
Yet the efforts sparked protests from more than 115, 000 websites, including the likes of Google and Reddit, as well as their users, who expressed concerns that the site-blocking power went too far and could be overly censorious. The New York Times called the conflict” a political coming of age for the tech industry.”
However, the sector has significantly changed in the past ten years. Silicon Valley’s biggest faces stood behind President Donald Trump during his inauguration, for one thing. Plus, major streaming services owned by digital behemoths, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube and Apple TV, now distribute licensed live sports—including NFL games. They have become stakeholders, like the NFL, UFC and NBA, in ensuring their content is protected from illegal streams.
” Getting the streamers involved in]urging for copyright protection reforms ] is incredibly important”, Epstein observed. He cited the fact that there are now more than 300 million Netflix subscribers worldwide and that he is a live sports fan. Epstein argued that Big Tech can provide information on data protection that could be useful to sports associations.
” Companies like Netflix are also very sophisticated from a technology standpoint”, Epstein emphasized. ” They’re well positioned to address the piracy problem and lend their knowledge”.
Last year, Charles Rivkin, the CEO of Hollywood trade association MPA, indicated that the anti-piracy battle would be heating up again. According to him,” Site-blocking is a targeted, legal tactic to disrupt the connection between digital pirates and their intended audience,” he said at CinemaCon. Website blocking in large numbers has been shown to lower piracy and increase legal sales, even though fully rooting out illegal activity is out of reach.
An industry trade group for the adult entertainment industry is currently challenging a Texas law that requires age verification for access to porn sites. Future internet regulation debates may be influenced by the Supreme Court’s decision regarding the First Amendment.
According to Jeffrey Westling, director of technology and innovation policy at the American Action Forum,” there’s still a lot of political weight” in the fight against piracy at large. ” I still think that there’s an avenue forward this Congress”.
It remains to be seen how Trump will react in a new political era, which has so far been dominated by executive branch decisions made by Trump’s White House.
Notably, UFC’s interests could carry extra weight in the deliberations, with UFC CEO Dana White nurturing a decades-long relationship with Trump. At the same time, Trump has railed against some of America’s biggest broadcasters, including filing a$ 10 billion lawsuit in Texas against CBS over its handling of an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. He might not agree to give them a policy goal that is already on their wish list.
According to Westling, it seems like the right person in President Trump’s ear can often have a big impact on what he does.
Whether Trump and a new Congress address the DMCA and related reforms is yet to be seen. Trump has not recently shared his thoughts on the discussion. In the past, he has backed up expanding the first amendment’s, while also supporting expanding online crackdowns on bad actors.
Epstein believes the President and Congress will be “receptive” to addressing “piracy problems”. He also reaffirmed that the law can only accomplish certain things.
” We know that technology tends to run way out in front of legislation”.