Showtime Start Legal War Over Mayweather-McGregor 'Streams'

[Ruthless-RKO]

Showtime is already staging a legal war against dozens of websites that are already promoting unauthorized streams of next Saturday's pay-per-view bout between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor.

Mayweather-McGregor, taking place on August 26th from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, has a hefty pay-per-view price tag of nearly $100 in the United States for an HD feed.

Illegal streams are nothing new for the internet, and most - if not all - boxing and UFC pay-per-view events are illegally streamed on websites and social media.

The huge price tag of Mayweather-McGregor will entice a lot of fans to seek out alternative ways to view the fight for a reduced rate or by locating an illegal feed.

On Tuesday, Showtime filed their complaint in United States District Court in California - to prevent more than 40 websites from airing an unauthorized stream of the fight.

The legal papers note that the offending websites are "all currently formatted as Mayweather v. McGregor blogs populated with articles that are stuffed with keywords related to the fight. Plaintiff alleges that Defendants have engaged in such keyword stuffing as a form of search engine optimization in an effort to attract as much web traffic as possible in the form of Internet users searching for a way to access a live stream of the Fight."

Because of this strategy, Showtime argues that several of the potentially infringing sites appear in the top Google search results. The network says it expects the sites to be populated with links to sites offering the live stream right before the fight is broadcast.

Showtime is asking the court for an injunction to stop defendants and any of their partners or licensees from making the fight available for viewing or transferring their websites to another registrant or registrar.

A similar legal move took place back in 2015, when Mayweather fought Manny Pacquiao - which had an identical pay-per-view price tag. Showtime and HBO sued for "anticipated" copyright infringement — and the court granted a temporary injunction. It ordered the sites to be taken offline prior to the start of the fight through the next morning.

[KiwiRider]

Duco Events has run blanket prosecution on live streaming for Joseph Parker's last 2 fights.
Good on them.

[Ricky_]

God bless the streamers until sports are fairly priced.

[Asterix]

We've seen with the film industry and the music industry that prosecuting potential customers is NOT the right way to do it. The content needs to be made more accessible, if you want to increase your income. It's painfully obvious.

[Jip]

God bless the streamers until sports are fairly priced.

This

[SaadOffTheDeck]

The UFC has been doing this for years, doesn't work. It's no easier than the 'war' on drugs.

[Tarkus]

Its neither right nor wrong. It is stupid. They might as well be banging heads on the wall.

[crusader]

If it weren't for streams I'd probably be out of boxing, and not paying for the occasional PPV as I do now.

[Boxing Prospect]

Yay for legal streams!

[gilgamesh]

God bless the streamers until sports are fairly priced.

Indeed. I wouldn't pay $100 to see it if it was taking place in my own front yard.

If I can't find a feed for it, I'm perfectly fine with just watching Cotto kick Kamegai's ass instead. Don't feel like I'd be missing much here.

[rd350lc]

God bless the streamers until sports are fairly priced.

Well said that man ! I reckon 80 percent of streamers wouldn't do so if they made ppv events a reasonable price .

[gilgamesh]

God bless the streamers until sports are fairly priced.

Well said that man ! I reckon 80 percent of streamers wouldn't do so if they made ppv events a reasonable price .

And at this point they've gotten so overpriced they'd have to knock at least 80% off of what they're charging. $20 bucks I might be interested. There's NO FIGHT, that's gonna make me spend $100 dollars.

If you had GGG/Canelo
Joshua/Wilder
Loma/Garcia
Crawford vs Spence

All on the same night, on the same card I still ain't paying 100 dollars to see it.

[rd350lc]

God bless the streamers until sports are fairly priced.

Well said that man ! I reckon 80 percent of streamers wouldn't do so if they made ppv events a reasonable price .

And at this point they've gotten so overpriced they'd have to knock at least 80% off of what they're charging. $20 bucks I might be interested. There's NO FIGHT, that's gonna make me spend $100 dollars.

If you had GGG/Canelo
Joshua/Wilder
Loma/Garcia
Crawford vs Spence

All on the same night, on the same card I still ain't paying 100 dollars to see it.

In total agreement , in my mind the excessive amounts of money some sports " stars " earn has ruined sport .

Particularly in the UK the money floating around in the premiership football league repulses me and I despise it .

I used to love watching football , but will not even bother highlights anymore and take no interest in results .

Boxers I believe do deserve to earn very well because of the risks involved , but the upcoming pantomime of a fight takes the piss .

[gilgamesh]

Well said that man ! I reckon 80 percent of streamers wouldn't do so if they made ppv events a reasonable price .

And at this point they've gotten so overpriced they'd have to knock at least 80% off of what they're charging. $20 bucks I might be interested. There's NO FIGHT, that's gonna make me spend $100 dollars.

If you had GGG/Canelo
Joshua/Wilder
Loma/Garcia
Crawford vs Spence

All on the same night, on the same card I still ain't paying 100 dollars to see it.

In total agreement , in my mind the excessive amounts of money some sports " stars " earn has ruined sport .

Particularly in the UK the money floating around in the premiership football league repulses me and I despise it .

I used to love watching football , but will not even bother highlights anymore and take no interest in results .

Boxers I believe do deserve to earn very well because of the risks involved , but the upcoming pantomime of a fight takes the piss .

All Professional athletes are overpaid. If I ruled the world they'd all take a HUGE pay cut. Because frankly as big a fan as I am, there's more important things in the world than sports.

[SaadOffTheDeck]

And at this point they've gotten so overpriced they'd have to knock at least 80% off of what they're charging. $20 bucks I might be interested. There's NO FIGHT, that's gonna make me spend $100 dollars.

If you had GGG/Canelo
Joshua/Wilder
Loma/Garcia
Crawford vs Spence

All on the same night, on the same card I still ain't paying 100 dollars to see it.

In total agreement , in my mind the excessive amounts of money some sports " stars " earn has ruined sport .

Particularly in the UK the money floating around in the premiership football league repulses me and I despise it .

I used to love watching football , but will not even bother highlights anymore and take no interest in results .

Boxers I believe do deserve to earn very well because of the risks involved , but the upcoming pantomime of a fight takes the piss .

All Professional athletes are overpaid. If I ruled the world they'd all take a HUGE pay cut. Because frankly as big a fan as I am, there's more important things in the world than sports.

The other sports don't suffer because of it. Boxing does immensely.

[gilgamesh]

I agree, but my reason for doing what I mention would have nothing to do with "Helping out the sports" it would be about helping out the world at large, and getting our priorities straight.

This is all just hypothetical of course though, and another conversation altogether really.

But yes, Boxers pay rates coming back down to Earth would go a long way in making the sport better, and more matchups the fans want to see happening.

[SaadOffTheDeck]

I agree, but my reason for doing what I mention would have nothing to do with "Helping out the sports" it would be about helping out the world at large, and getting our priorities straight.

This is all just hypothetical of course though, and another conversation altogether really.

But yes, Boxers pay rates coming back down to Earth would go a long way in making the sport better, and more matchups the fans want to see happening.

That's a noble thought, all you would be doing is making billionaires even richer. The players don't get the higher percentage of the money. The NBA signed a TV deal that was so huge they had to dump extra money to the players. Nobody seems to have an issue with Julia Roberts or Tom Cruise making 30 million bucks for a movie that flops.

The only way to fix Boxing in America would be to make all the big fights PPV with the boxers paid like Kovalev and by the time the fighters would be happy with what they draw all of us remaining fans would have thrown in the towel. Not that it's terrible, we've had some good fights this year. There is just no chance it will ever approach how great it was when I was growing up. Luckily, MMA is close.

[gilgamesh]

That's a noble thought, all you would be doing is making billionaires even richer. The players don't get the higher percentage of the money. The NBA signed a TV deal that was so huge they had to dump extra money to the players. Nobody seems to have an issue with Julia Roberts or Tom Cruise making 30 million bucks for a movie that flops.

The only way to fix Boxing in America would be to make all the big fights PPV with the boxers paid like Kovalev and by the time the fighters would be happy with what they draw all of us remaining fans would have thrown in the towel. Not that it's terrible, we've had some good fights this year. There is just no chance it will ever approach how great it was when I was growing up. Luckily, MMA is close.

I'd cut Julia and Tom's pay rates to ZERO if I ruled the world, but again that's a different conversation altogether

MMA isn't remotely close to Boxing for me in terms of excitement. Just a personal preference thing, but the matchmaking is undeniably WAY better in MMA.

[SaadOffTheDeck]

That's a noble thought, all you would be doing is making billionaires even richer. The players don't get the higher percentage of the money. The NBA signed a TV deal that was so huge they had to dump extra money to the players. Nobody seems to have an issue with Julia Roberts or Tom Cruise making 30 million bucks for a movie that flops.

The only way to fix Boxing in America would be to make all the big fights PPV with the boxers paid like Kovalev and by the time the fighters would be happy with what they draw all of us remaining fans would have thrown in the towel. Not that it's terrible, we've had some good fights this year. There is just no chance it will ever approach how great it was when I was growing up. Luckily, MMA is close.

I'd cut Julia and Tom's pay rates to ZERO if I ruled the world, but again that's a different conversation altogether

MMA isn't remotely close to Boxing for me in terms of excitement. Just a personal preference thing, but the matchmaking is undeniably WAY better in MMA.

Boxing at its best is better than MMA at its best, Boxing at it's worst is worse than bad MMA. I'm just talking about the match ups. If Boxing could swing cards like they do it would be huge.

[gilgamesh]

Clearly you've never seen Renzo Gracie vs Sanae Kikuta in Pride FC.

Worst fight I've ever seen in any Combat Sport by a HUGE margin.

They fought for almost an hour before Kikuta FINALLY f*cked up and got caught in a choke. It was so awful even the commentators exclaimed "Thank God!" when it was over

[SaadOffTheDeck]

Clearly you've never seen Renzo Gracie vs Sanae Kikuta in Pride FC.

Worst fight I've ever seen in any Combat Sport by a HUGE margin.

They fought for almost an hour before Kikuta FINALLY f*cked up and got caught in a choke. It was so awful even the commentators exclaimed "Thank God!" when it was over

Greg Page and Tony Tubbs was an hour of life. The fact that it's shorter makes all the difference.

[KiwiRider]

This is a ruling from the Parker fight.
Sky now encodes the broadcast so a team of 17 staff can track it being loaded onto the internet, then all illegal streamers were prosecuted. If they were under age, the parents or care givers wore the costs.

The Judge was satisfied that each defendant had infringed SKY's copyright. Further the Judge granted an injunction restraining any further infringement of the copyright work and that each defendant must delete and/or destroy any copies held, including from Facebook and must pay nominal damages of $100 as well as costs of $2,670.

SKY chief executive John Fellet said: “It’s a good result to have this unlawful behaviour confirmed by the courts. We have more claims in the judicial system that we await further positive results from in the coming weeks. In our opinion, we believe that Piracy is theft of copyright. We will continue to work hard to protect SKY’s investments in all kind of content.

So $2770 Per illegal stream plus whatever your legal representation costs.

[Ilya Muromets]

How did they come up with 44% of the voters here supporting the tv and boxing mobsters? I probably wouldn't even watch this stupid thing for free anyway because i figure it's going to be faker than wrestling, and taking place in the most crooked boxing venue on earth no less, organized crime's own private playground, Las Vegas.

[Ilya Muromets]

I agree, but my reason for doing what I mention would have nothing to do with "Helping out the sports" it would be about helping out the world at large, and getting our priorities straight.

This is all just hypothetical of course though, and another conversation altogether really.

But yes, Boxers pay rates coming back down to Earth would go a long way in making the sport better, and more matchups the fans want to see happening.

This and your previous comment - absolutely. Illiterates like Mayweather flaunting his millions while research scientists can barely live with what they get paid. Of course this only applies to a tiny percentage of boxers, while all the regular guys are trying to get some gig who knows where at a moments notice and get their brains bashed in for a few bucks with no health insurance and no nothing.

[seattledirk]

How did they come up with 44% of the voters here supporting the tv and boxing mobsters? I probably wouldn't even watch this stupid thing for free anyway because i figure it's going to be faker than wrestling, and taking place in the most crooked boxing venue on earth no less, organized crime's own private playground, Las Vegas.

It's their product and they can charge whatever they like for it. Nobody is forced to buy it.
That's one way to look at it and that's a perfectly valid point.

Then again, I tend to side with you for the following reasons.
The Premier League is doing the same thing: take a sport with a traditional target audience of low to middle class, charge the f*ck out of it and slowly turn it into a luxury product which can only be afforded by higher income classes. British football stadiums are full of event fans because the real fans can only afford watching the games in their local pub. So yeah, I think it's legit to fight back guerilla-style.

I hate the entire PPV model anyways. Unfortunately the US has such a long PPV tradition that people are used to paying a lot for some sports event. Pro-wrestling events in the 1980s sold up to 4 mio PPVs, that's an incredible number. The problem is that common people pay that much, not just the rich people. So the blame doesn't solely lie on the evil PPV-industry, but also on the common people buying their overpriced product.
-------------------------

The UFC used to broadcast their events for free in Germany for several years. Then when they thought the customer base was solid enough, they switched to the usual PPV model and the market collapsed locally for the most part. I stopped watching immediately cause dishing out 40 bucks for one event seemed unreasonable and the majority of people thought similarly.

Just an idea, don't know if this would work in other markets:
The Klitschkos' fights are broadcast on free TV in Germany with a viewership of 10-15 mio people and commercials between rounds. Obviously that model is generating enough money on this one market to be worthwhile.
Wouldn't a fight like Mayweather-McGregor garner enough mainstream interest for it to work in many other markets on free TV?