Pirated Sports Streams Are Warping TV’s Most Important Ratings

Recorded: May 26, 2026, 1:14 p.m.

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Home Marketers Pirated Sports Streams Are Warping TV’s Most Important Ratings

Marketers
Pirated Sports Streams Are Warping TV’s Most Important Ratings By James Hercher

Tuesday, May 26th, 2026 – 1:00 am
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Advertisers love live sports. But good luck measuring that investment.
Although tides of ad revenue flow based on the ratings of certain tentpole TV events, a new crop of scammers now operate illicit sports livestreaming rings, and there’s almost nothing broadcasters can do about it.
According to a new report released Tuesday by ad tech auditing and analytics startup Adalytics, illicit livestream sports services, such as WatchSports and StreamSports99, are distributing unauthorized individual streams of high-profile sporting events to hundreds of thousands of devices in some cases.

In one example, Adalytics observed a single individual stream of the Super Bowl on NBCU’s Peacock distributed to more than 100,000 devices. That was just one of more than 100 other sites redistributing livestreams of the game as well.
Ratings games
It’s obvious why this is a serious problem.
Streamers and traditional broadcasters spend immensely to procure the rights to games – everything from the Olympics to the regular NFL season. Brand sponsors, in turn, want attribution for their investment. The whole system relies on ratings.
And this is where it starts to get very hairy.
To estimate the total missed audience that watched illegal streams of sporting events is practically impossible. Were the viewers hosting parties? Watching alone? Working at a bar or restaurant when they realized they didn’t have the right subscription and decided to pirate?
With this in mind, the Super Bowl’s ratings were likely off by somewhere between one and two million total viewers, and that’s being conservative, Adalytics Founder and CEO Krzysztof Franaszek told AdExchanger.
Adalytics focused on Peacock in its report because NBCU hosted both the Super Bowl and the Winter Olympics in Milan this year, both events that generate outsized demand. But it observed the same practice playing out across every major streaming platform.
How does it work?
This (relatively) new form of live-sports piracy involves creating a mirrored version of “legit” subscriber streams, allowing third-party redistribution sites and VPNs to show one laptop screen’s view to other devices.
Each pirate has its own paid subscription and offers users the ability to watch for free if they download their solution. Viewers are kept abreast of which sites and apps are still operational and haven’t been shut down for illegal distribution via Discord servers and forums that can’t be accessed through the open web.
Because these illicit services update their customers via private servers and forums on the dark web that can’t be taken down, plus now having AI tools that make it trivial to spin up an endless number of new sites or apps, the practice is almost impossible to prevent, Franaszek said.
Broadcasters would need American law enforcement to get involved and for infrastructure-level web platforms like Cloudflare to take preventative action.
In the meantime, illegal streaming services know all the loopholes.
“To stay safe and enjoy seamless viewing, always use the latest official mirror sites listed right here,” reads the disclaimer atop StreamSports99.com as of this writing.
But StreamSports99 isn’t only a .com. There’s also StreamSports99.ru, .tv, .ch, .cx, .website and .fun. And if you want to sign up for the premium version, which provides worldwide access and customer support, you can head to StreamSports99.su to enter your credit card information. (For the uninitiated, that’s an old Soviet Union code.)
Although Adalytics could see that the vast majority of viewers are in the US, many illicit networks traffic through Russia, according to Franaszek – another reason why broadcasters have no good options to prevent the practice.
No solution
So, can this problem be fixed? The straightforward answer is “No.”
Neither streaming services nor sports leagues have the power to easily put a stop to the pirated livestreams.
When, for instance, AdExchanger reached out to seek comment from NBC for this story, an NBC spokesperson rebuffed all questions and said only that this “may be a better ask for the NFL.”
An NFL spokesperson, meanwhile, told AdExchanger that the league has long been aware of illegal streams of its games and does what it can using its internal and external resources – though the spokesperson also compared prohibiting piracy to trying to win at Whac-A-Mole.
Beyond that, the NFL added, given that the Adalytics report details the illicit streaming of Peacock content, it “feels like NBC should do most of the talking here.”
Not that the NFL always stays mum.
Last September, the NFL put Nielsen on notice and began a review of vendor alternatives. “There are millions of viewers that we believe they are systematically undercounting,” Paul Ballew, the NFL’s chief data and analytics officer, told The Wall Street Journal at the time.
The NFL has pointed to co-viewing, which is when groups of people within a household watch a single stream, as one potential explanation for those missing millions. The ratings for this year’s Super Bowl were roughly two million viewers below last year.
But the illegal streams uncovered by Adalytics are also no doubt a factor.
A Nielsen spokesperson acknowledged to AdExchanger that live-sports piracy is extremely difficult to track, but added that Nielsen does have methods to account for illicit viewing. Some Nielsen panel households have devices that pick up audio from what’s playing on the TV, for instance.
Nielsen’s Streaming Meter measurement can also determine if a TV stream is coming via “unauthorized” sources, such as these pirated streams, per the spokesperson. And those views go into the ratings. “We will still credit that viewing because those people are still part of the program’s audience,” they told AdExchanger over email.
The payout
The unfortunate fact, though, is that viewers of illegal mirrored sports streams are mostly unaccounted for. And the advertising and media industries can’t easily demonetize the practice, either, because the bad actors here aren’t doing ad fraud.
Some ads do appear on the homepages of redistribution sites, Franaszek said, but they’re mostly pushing people to download add-ons, like the ability to stream in better quality, access customer support or add live sports betting tips. And unlike more run-of-the-mill live sports piracy operations, these mirrored networks aren’t injecting lucrative CTV or video ads.
In fact, the irony is that, for the Super Bowl and other major TV events, advertisers are actually getting hundreds of thousands or even millions of free additional exposures. Yes, those viewers are streaming illegally, but it’s still a TV-quality stream and likely on a smart TV.
Some viewers of the pirated streams may not even fully understand the illegality, since the services are generally marketed as legit ways to view live pay-gated content.
Franaszek’s theory is that the mirroring services are probably fronts for malware distribution, and thus the ad fraud and subscription payments are a marginal benefit for the scheme. The point is to infect devices. That might explain why the ads they show are mostly pushing toolbars or software packets to download.
Almost makes one long for a simple, good old-fashioned ad fraud operation.

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Illicit sports livestreaming rings are significantly distorting the ratings of television events, posing a serious challenge to traditional measurement systems. According to a report by Adalytics, illicit services such as WatchSports and StreamSports99 distribute unauthorized streams of high-profile sporting events to hundreds of thousands of devices. For instance, one observation noted that a single individual stream of the Super Bowl on Peacock was distributed across more than one hundred thousand devices, alongside numerous other unauthorized redistribution sites.

This discrepancy creates substantial difficulty in accurately measuring viewership and, consequently, estimating the true value of advertising investments tied to these events. The authors suggest that estimating the total audience that watched illegal streams is nearly impossible, as variables such as hosting parties or viewing under non-subscription circumstances are unknown. Adalytics estimated that the ratings for major events like the Super Bowl could be off by between one and two million total viewers, even when being conservative. This issue was observed across major streaming platforms, including Peacock, the Winter Olympics, and the NFL season, demonstrating a systemic problem across the industry.

The mechanism behind this piracy involves creating mirrored versions of legitimate subscriber streams, which allow third-party redistribution sites and virtual private networks to display the content to various devices. Each pirate typically possesses a legitimate subscription, offering free access to end-users by providing these mirrored solutions. These illicit networks maintain operational security by communicating updates and locations through private servers and dark web forums, augmented by artificial intelligence tools that make it trivial to spin up numerous new sites and applications. This combination of distributed, evolving illegal services makes prevention nearly impossible for broadcasters without external intervention.

Despite the challenges, organizations like the National Football League and measurement bodies are engaging with the problem. The NFL has been aware of these illegal streams and has explored alternatives to traditional ratings, such as accounting for co-viewing, which is hypothesized as a factor in the discrepancies in viewership. Furthermore, Nielsen has methods to address this, employing its Streaming Meter measurement to detect streams originating from unauthorized sources, and they credit these illicit views to the overall ratings.

Regarding monetization, the illicit networks are not primarily injecting lucrative advertising revenue through CTV or video ads. Instead, the advertisements displayed on these redistribution sites tend to push users toward downloading supplementary software or add-ons, such as enhanced streaming quality or access to live sports betting tips. This suggests that the primary function of these mirrored networks may be to serve as vectors for malware distribution, with any advertising revenue being a marginal benefit to the scheme of infecting devices. The irony is that advertisers still receive exposure, as the streams maintain high quality, and viewers are often marketed to under the guise of legitimate pay-gated content.