UK anti-piracy organisation FACT says enforcement activity over the summer has resulted in prison sentences, arrests and financial penalties against operators and users of illegal streaming services, with three recent cases involving around £1.4 million in revenue.
The largest involved Milan Ibrahim, 68, from Lancashire, who was sentenced in August to six-and-a-half years in prison after generating almost £1 million over three years from an illegal television streaming operation.
The service, initially identified by FACT and referred to the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU), supplied customers in the UK and overseas, including British expatriates. A City of London Police investigation resulted in 80 streaming servers in Chorley being seized and shut down.
Content from the BBC, ITV, Sky and the Premier League was among that redistributed without authorisation.
A separate investigation begun by FACT in January 2023 identified Craig Austin, 38, of Whiston, Merseyside, as being behind a service selling unauthorised premium television subscriptions.
Austin had operated the service for more than five years and generated £205,000. FACT referred its findings to Merseyside Police in April 2025 and a warrant was executed four months later.
Austin pleaded guilty to fraud-related offences and possession of criminal property. He received a 32-month sentence, suspended for three years, together with 150 hours of unpaid work and rehabilitation activities.
In a third case, Michael Barrow was sentenced at Swansea Crown Court to three years and two months in prison after pleading guilty to three fraud offences.
Barrow continued selling illegal IPTV subscriptions and pre-loaded Fire TV sticks despite receiving a cease-and-desist notice in 2021. His service reached almost 2,000 customers and generated more than £200,000.
The prosecution was brought by the Premier League with support from FACT and the TARIAN Regional Organised Crime Unit’s Economic Crime Team.
Collectively, the three operations generated around £1.4 million.
The cases come amid continued efforts by broadcasters, sports rights holders and law enforcement agencies to disrupt the supply of pirate IPTV services rather than concentrating solely on blocking individual streams.
Research from WPI Economics commissioned by BeStreamWise estimates piracy involving sport, film and television costs the UK economy at least £1.35 billion in lost revenue annually, which it equates to 10,400 jobs.
FACT Investigations Manager Nick Sumner said the Austin case demonstrated how “intelligence-led investigations and close cooperation with law enforcement” could identify those operating illegal services and bring them before the courts.
Enforcement over the summer has extended beyond IPTV operators. FACT prosecutions involving pubs in Staffordshire and Wales resulted in licensees being ordered to pay more than £29,000 in combined fines and costs for illegally showing Sky Sports.
Investigations are also continuing in Merseyside, where four men were arrested on June 25 and 26 following intelligence-sharing between FACT and Merseyside Police. Six warrants were executed in an operation targeting suspected streaming services believed to have supplied thousands of customers.
FACT and Sky have meanwhile extended enforcement activity into Ireland. Ten suspected IPTV sellers across Carlow, Cork, Dublin, Kildare, Galway, Laois and Limerick have been served with legal warnings following joint investigations.
Cease-and-desist notices were issued to individuals suspected of supplying unauthorised access to premium television, films and live sport. The campaign also warns users of pirate IPTV services that customer information obtained during investigations may be passed to authorities.
FACT says its investigations combine open-source and human intelligence with payment information, digital trails and examination of devices. Evidence gathered by the organisation can subsequently be used to support police investigations, prosecutions or other enforcement action on behalf of broadcasters and rights holders.
Identifying a pirate stream, requesting its removal and taking action against its operator remain important parts of content protection. In the era of illegal live streaming, however, a purely reactive approach often comes too late. Omdia’s study Next-Generation Anti-Piracy for TV and Video: Why the streaming era demands a shift from reaction to prevention therefore recommends complementing traditional content protection mechanisms with preventive tools capable of stopping some attacks before content reaches illegal distribution channels.
Omdia’s July 2026 study points out that protection based solely on detecting and removing illegal content after it has appeared can no longer keep pace with modern piracy. The objective should therefore not be to abandon traditional protection measures, but to complement them with security mechanisms capable of stopping some attacks earlier in the content distribution chain.
Reactive protection only intervenes after an attack has begun
Anti-piracy efforts have traditionally been largely reactive: illegal content first had to be detected, followed by a takedown request and, where necessary, further legal or technical action. This approach still has an important role to play, but Omdia notes that modern forms of piracy are able to exploit its limitations. According to the study, individual traditional protection methods have their own weaknesses:
Conditional access systems (CAS) can be circumvented, for example, through access-card cloning or key sharing.
DRM protects digital content against unauthorized playback, but video can still be captured once it has been legitimately decrypted for viewing.
Illegal-content takedown requests are constrained by speed: content may be republished before the original copy has even been removed.
Enforcement by platforms, app stores and internet service providers can shut down a pirate service, but its operations may simply move elsewhere.
Real-time monitoring of pirate streams detects theft only after it has already begun. In the case of live sports, enforcement may therefore come too late.
Each of these tools consequently has limitations that pirates can exploit. Reactive measures also face a fundamental constraint: time. Intervention only takes place after content has already begun to circulate illegally. According to Omdia, this is precisely why reactive measures need to be complemented by preventive protection.
Today’s attacks target more than the video itself
Modern piracy can target several parts of the distribution chain at the same time, including applications, credentials and the infrastructure through which content is delivered to viewers. Protecting the video itself is therefore no longer sufficient.
One prominent example is the abuse of a content delivery network (CDN). An attacker may obtain a valid access token—a digital credential authorizing access—and use it to retrieve a stream directly from the legitimate service provider’s infrastructure. Protection mechanisms must therefore verify not only whether a user is entitled to view the content, but also whether the request genuinely originates from an official, unmodified application.
Some attacks need to be stopped before content is distributed
The fundamental shift is that service providers should not simply wait until content has been stolen and then attempt to trace and remove it. Some attacks can be stopped at the point where an attacker attempts to gain access to the content.
Omdia highlights four key elements of next-generation content protection:
Multi-DRM – manages encryption and authorized playback across different devices and DRM technologies.
Forensic watermarking – makes it possible to trace the source of a leak and target subsequent enforcement more precisely.
Application security – detects and blocks unauthorized modifications to applications or the misuse of access credentials.
Application attestation – verifies that content requests originate from a legitimate, protected application and helps prevent the misuse of credentials and distribution infrastructure.
Multi-DRM provides the fundamental layer of protection, while forensic watermarking primarily serves a reactive function. Application security and attestation, by contrast, move content protection further towards prevention.
DRM remains a cornerstone of protection, but is not sufficient on its own
Modern Multi-DRM systems make it possible to centrally manage encryption and licensing across different DRM technologies and device types. They therefore provide a fundamental protection layer in an environment where service providers distribute content across a wide range of platforms.
However, comprehensive protection must also cover the application itself, access to content and communication with backend systems.
Forensic watermarking helps identify the source of a leak
Forensic watermarking embeds identifying information into video content, making it possible to trace a specific leak back to its source. A watermark does not prevent theft by itself, but it helps determine where an illegal copy or stream originated and enables subsequent enforcement action to be targeted more precisely.
Omdia also notes that some watermarking methods have limitations, particularly in live broadcasting. Where identifying information is inserted directly by the user’s application, the reliability of the protection also depends on the security of the application itself. The individual layers of protection are therefore interconnected.
The application itself is becoming part of the security perimeter
As streaming has developed, some security functions have moved directly into applications running on devices that are not controlled by the service provider. According to Omdia, code obfuscation alone is not sufficient. Applications must also be protected against unauthorized modification and the misuse or manipulation of communications with backend systems.
An additional protection layer is provided by access control and client application attestation. The system verifies not only the user’s entitlement, but also whether the request originates from an official, unmodified application. This can help block modified applications, misuse of access credentials and unauthorized retrieval of streams from the CDN. Protection therefore intervenes before the content reaches illegal distribution channels.
Prevention is not intended to replace reactive measures, but to make them more effective
According to Omdia, preventive and reactive protection are not competing strategies. If application security and access-control mechanisms stop some attacks in advance, fewer attacks progress to the stage of illegal distribution. Reactive tools can then be deployed in a more targeted and effective manner.
The key change is therefore one of defensive logic: stop what can be stopped in advance; rapidly identify what gets through; and remove content that reaches illegal distribution channels as quickly as possible.
No security mechanism remains effective indefinitely without change
Omdia also stresses that no security mechanism can be considered permanently unbreakable. Attackers can gradually analyze DRM systems, forensic watermarking and application protection mechanisms and look for ways to circumvent them. The ability to continuously modify and renew protection mechanisms is therefore critical.
Security thus becomes an ongoing process rather than a one-off measure. The faster a service provider can update its protection mechanisms, the more difficult it becomes for attackers to repeatedly exploit a vulnerability they have already discovered.
From protecting the video to securing the entire distribution chain
Omdia’s final recommendation is therefore not based on any single technology. Service providers should assess whether their existing protection measures can withstand current attack methods—particularly CDN abuse, credential misuse and attacks targeting applications—and complement traditional reactive content-protection tools with preventive security layers. The objective is no longer simply to find and remove a pirate stream as quickly as possible. Increasingly, the priority is to stop the attack before the content reaches illegal distribution channels.
About the study:Next-Generation Anti-Piracy for TV and Video: Why the streaming era demands a shift from reaction to prevention was published in July 2026 by technology research and advisory firm Omdia. It was authored by Rob Gallagher, Principal Analyst for Consumer Technology and Services, and Rik Turner, Principal Analyst for Cybersecurity. The study was commissioned by Verimatrix and, in addition to examining how piracy is evolving in the streaming era, explores why the authors believe traditional reactive content-protection tools increasingly need to be combined with preventive security mechanisms. The analysis draws on Omdia’s ongoing research across television and online video, digital content, consumer behaviour, cybersecurity and enterprise technology. The consumer data used in the study includes an online survey conducted in November 2025 among 21,806 people aged 18–64 in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. Data on the reasons for using unauthorized video services is based on responses from 4,499 respondents across the same nine countries.
The Creative Europe MEDIA programme will celebrate its 35th anniversary in 2026. Since its inception in 1991, it has played a key role in the development of the European film and audiovisual industry and has supported creators, producers, distributors and audiences of European works.
For more than three decades, the MEDIA Programme has contributed to enhancing the cultural diversity of European cinema and strengthening cooperation between European countries. The programme supports market development, facilitates the international distribution of European productions and helps European audiovisual companies to build a competitive and sustainable position in the global market.
The Czech Republic has been participating in the programme since 2002.
Enter the competition to win European films!
The KE MEDIA office, in collaboration with DaFilms.cz, is organising a competition on Facebook called ‘35 Years = 35 Films for You’, featuring 35 films supported by the KE MEDIA programme. The competition for vouchers to watch European films online takes place every Monday and runs until the end of 2026.
35 years of supporting European audiovisual content
Since its inception, this programme has pursued two key objectives: to promote cultural diversity in Europe and to strengthen the competitiveness of the European audiovisual industry.
The MEDIA programme is constantly adapting to the evolving market – the development of new technologies, new distribution models and changing ways in which audiences consume content. Currently, support is being extended not only to film and television, but also to video games, immersive projects (XR), innovation and new forms of content production and distribution.
The MEDIA programme remains one of the most important tools supporting the development of the European audiovisual sector – both within Europe and beyond. In a world of dynamic technological and market changes, the programme helps to keep European stories moving and to reach new audiences.
CANAL+ and LALIGA have signed a strategic anti-piracy agreement covering almost 50 countries across Europe, sub-Saharan Africa and Haiti, expanding their long-standing commercial relationship into a coordinated effort to combat illegal sports streaming.
The agreement will see the broadcaster and the Spanish football league share intelligence, coordinate enforcement strategies and combine technology and operational expertise to tackle piracy networks operating across multiple territories.
The partnership builds on CANAL+’s long-standing distribution of LALIGA competitions in France, Europe, Africa and Haiti, but extends cooperation beyond media rights into the protection of sports content.
Both organisations said piracy has become one of the biggest threats to the sports industry, reducing revenues that support clubs, youth development and investment in broadcast production. They also warned that illegal streaming services expose consumers to risks including malware, fraud and personal data theft.
Maxime Saada, chief executive of CANAL+, said the scale of the agreement reflected the importance the company places on tackling content piracy. He added combining the organisations’ expertise would strengthen enforcement capabilities and called on the wider sports and audiovisual industries to take similar action.
LALIGA president Javier Tebas said piracy could not be tackled by individual organisations acting alone. He said the partnership would combine technology, intelligence and operational expertise to protect the value of the league’s competitions, broadcasters’ investments and the long-term sustainability of football.
The television and streaming market continues to grow, but its economics are becoming increasingly strained. While the cost of premium content and sports rights remains high, market growth is being driven to an increasing extent by streaming models that generate lower revenue per viewer. The Omdia study Next-Generation Anti-Piracy for TV and Video: Why the streaming era demands a shift from reaction to prevention therefore warns that piracy can no longer be viewed solely as a technical or legal issue. It is having an increasingly significant impact on revenues, operating costs and the return on investment in content.
Published by research firm Omdia in July 2026, the study examines piracy in the context of the broader transformation of the economics of the television and online video market. On the one hand, service providers must finance expensive programming and premium rights; on the other, they face pressure on profitability and changes in the revenue mix. According to Omdia, it is precisely in this environment that the role of content protection is changing, moving from a supporting security function to a strategic business priority.
The economic dimension of the problem is further amplified by the profile of those consuming pirated content. Omdia points out that nearly half of the highest-spending and most engaged viewers are also among the most active consumers of pirated content. Piracy therefore has a significant impact even on audiences that are of exceptional commercial value to service providers.
The market is growing, but the revenue mix is changing
At first glance, the outlook for the industry appears relatively positive. Omdia forecasts that global television and premium online video revenues will increase from approximately USD 504 billion in 2025 to more than USD 560 billion in 2030. However, growth in the market’s overall value does not tell the whole story. It is equally important to consider where the new revenue is coming from.
According to the study, pay-TV subscription revenues and linear television advertising revenues are declining. Growth is increasingly concentrated in ad-supported streaming tiers and other online video formats, which on average generate lower revenue per viewer. The overall market can therefore continue to grow even though part of that growth comes from business models that generate less revenue per user.
The chart below shows the development of global television and premium online video revenues between 2018 and 2030, broken down into pay TV, linear TV advertising, paid premium online video and premium online video advertising.
Source: Omdia
These changes are highly relevant to the discussion around piracy. In addition to pursuing further growth, service providers are placing increasing emphasis on profitability and on their ability to monetize audiences effectively. Protecting content revenues is therefore becoming increasingly important at a time when the economics of the entire industry are under growing pressure.
Premium content still comes at a high cost
Costs, meanwhile, continue to rise. Omdia expects content spending by major media groups to reach a record USD 203 billion in 2026 and increase to USD 211 billion by 2030. Of that amount, rights to live sports alone are expected to account for USD 73 billion in 2030.
This creates a challenging combination for providers: the content they need to attract and retain viewers remains extremely expensive, while an increasing share of revenues is being generated in an environment with lower revenue per user. Piracy is therefore not only a question of content ownership, but also of whether multibillion-dollar investments in that content can generate an adequate return.
Source: Omdia
The chart shows global television and video content spending by leading media groups between 2016 and 2030, broken down into sports, acquired content and original productions. Together with the previous chart, it clearly illustrates the fundamental economic pressure facing the industry: the revenue mix is changing, while content costs remain high.
Sports are exceptionally valuable — and expensive
According to Omdia, the high level of spending on sports rights has a clear economic rationale. Sports help attract new subscribers and reduce churn. Because most sports coverage is watched live, it can also bring together a mass audience at a single moment, making it exceptionally valuable for advertising and sponsorship.
The development of sports rights prices is not uniform across all countries — growth is slowing in some markets while accelerating in others — but sports remain one of the most significant budget items for operators. This makes the impact of live sports piracy particularly acute: it affects content in which providers invest exceptionally large sums with the expectation that it will attract new subscribers and generate advertising and sponsorship revenue.
With live sports, minutes matter
Omdia identifies live restreaming as one of the defining threats of the current era of piracy. Live content is illegally redistributed in real time through pirate CTV services, social platforms, dedicated websites and apps. According to the study, this is where the financial risk is highest and where the scope for reactive intervention is most limited. By the time a takedown request for an illegal stream is issued, the match may already be over and the associated revenue lost. In this context, piracy affects the product precisely at the moment when it has the greatest commercial value to the rights holder.
When the operator also bears the cost of the pirate stream
The study illustrates the economic impact even more clearly using the example of abuse of a legitimate provider’s distribution infrastructure, known as CDN leeching. Attackers can obtain stolen access tokens from legitimate applications and use them to pull the stream directly from the operator’s network. As a result, content may be delivered to non-paying viewers through the same infrastructure that the provider finances for its legitimate customers.
According to Omdia, this type of abuse has a threefold impact. First, it increases the operator’s data delivery costs, as the provider is effectively paying to distribute content to non-paying viewers precisely during periods of peak demand. Second, the additional load may degrade service quality for legitimate subscribers. Third, it reduces the return on investment in premium content. Piracy therefore not only lowers the return on investment in premium content, but can also directly increase operating costs.
Content protection is moving from IT into strategic management
According to Omdia, the growing economic significance of piracy is also reflected in the priorities of media companies themselves. More than half of technology executives at television, film, sports and online video providers consider content protection — including technologies and measures such as digital watermarking, anti-piracy tools, application security and controls designed to limit unauthorized credential sharing — to be a highly significant business challenge.
Content protection is therefore moving onto a similar level of importance as other major issues facing the media industry, such as the adoption of artificial intelligence, cloud migration and the convergence of traditional television broadcasting and streaming. Its role is changing: it is no longer simply about securing content delivery, but increasingly about protecting revenue, content investment and the economics of the service itself.
This shift is also reflected in investment plans. In a survey of 171 IT decision-makers at television, film, sports and online video providers, Omdia examined technology priorities and expected spending trends over the following 12 to 18 months. In this comparison, content protection ranks among the areas with both a high investment priority and growing expenditure. In terms of investment momentum, it ranks ahead of areas such as user experience, subscriber management, and content discovery and recommendation systems.
Source: Omdia
The chart shows that content protection is both a high-priority investment area and one in which providers expect spending to continue to increase.
Content protection is becoming part of investment protection
Against a backdrop of rising content costs, pressure on margins and pirate services that can now compete even in terms of user experience, perceptions of security are also changing. If content protection is viewed merely as a technical cost item, its business value can easily be overlooked. Omdia, however, takes a different view: content protection is increasingly also about protecting the revenue and the investment in the product for which the operator has paid.
Omdia therefore recommends that television and online video service providers treat content protection as a strategic priority. According to the study, underinvestment in this area carries the risk of losing not only revenue, but also the viewers whom investments in premium content were intended to attract and retain. From this perspective, combating piracy is no longer simply a matter of securing content; it is also about protecting the service’s business model.
According to the study, reactive measures alone are no longer sufficient. Modern piracy can exploit their limitations, and particularly in the case of live content, reactive intervention often comes too late. If revenue protection is to be truly effective, part of the defensive strategy must shift from identifying and removing illegal content after the fact to prevention — in other words, preventing attackers from obtaining the content in the first place and subsequently redistributing it. This shift from reaction to prevention will be the focus of the third part of the series.
About the study:Next-Generation Anti-Piracy for TV and Video: Why the streaming era demands a shift from reaction to prevention was published in July 2026 by research firm Omdia. Its authors are Rob Gallagher, Principal Analyst for Consumer Technology and Services, and Rik Turner, Principal Analyst for Cybersecurity. The study was commissioned by Verimatrix and, in addition to examining the transformation of piracy in the streaming era, explores why the authors believe traditional reactive content protection tools increasingly need to be combined with preventive security mechanisms. The analysis draws on Omdia’s ongoing research into television and online video, digital content, consumer behaviour, cybersecurity and enterprise technology. The consumer data used in the study includes, among other sources, an online survey conducted in November 2025 among 21,806 people aged 18–64 in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. Data on the reasons for using unauthorized video services is based on responses from 4,499 respondents across the same nine countries.
Většina Čechů se domnívá, že reklama nemá zásadní vliv na množství vypitého alkoholu. Za největší problémy spojené s alkoholem považují řízení pod vlivem, prodej alkoholu nezletilým a nedostatečné vymáhání platných pravidel. Vyplývá to z průzkumu agentury Ipsos pro Radu pro reklamu.
Většina Čechů si nemyslí, že reklama zásadně ovlivňuje množství vypitého alkoholu. Za největší problémy spojené s alkoholem naopak považují řízení pod vlivem a prodej alkoholu nezletilým. Vyplývá to z průzkumu agentury Ipsos pro Radu pro reklamu, který zjišťoval postoje veřejnosti ke konzumaci alkoholu, regulaci a samoregulaci reklamy.
Podle výsledků průzkumu považuje polovina respondentů vliv reklamy na množství zkonzumovaného alkoholu za nulový nebo pouze nepatrný. Pouze šest procent dotázaných označilo reklamu za rozhodující faktor ovlivňující spotřebu alkoholu.
Průzkum zároveň ukázal, že veřejnost za nejzávažnější problémy spojené s alkoholem považuje především rizikové chování a nedodržování stávajících pravidel. Za závažný problém označilo 92 % respondentů řízení pod vlivem alkoholu. Následuje prodej alkoholu osobám mladším 18 let a nadměrná konzumace alkoholu, které jako problematické vnímá shodně 87 % dotázaných. Konzumaci alkoholu nezletilými považuje za závažný problém 85 % respondentů a nedostatečnou kontrolu dodržování zákonů při prodeji alkoholu 82 %.
Tomu odpovídají i preference navrhovaných opatření. Největší podporu získaly častější policejní kontroly řidičů zaměřené na alkohol, které by uvítalo 42 % respondentů. Dále lidé podporují důslednější kontroly prodeje alkoholu nezletilým a přísnější postihy za porušování pravidel v této oblasti, obě opatření podpořilo 38 % dotázaných.
Pokud by se stát měl zaměřit pouze na jednu oblast, třetina respondentů by upřednostnila zpřísnění postihů za řízení pod vlivem alkoholu a častější namátkové kontroly. Dalších 25 % by se soustředilo na důslednější vymáhání pravidel při prodeji alkoholu nezletilým. Omezení reklamy na alkohol označilo za prioritu přibližně deset procent dotázaných.
Průzkum se zaměřil také na samoregulaci reklamy. Za smysluplný nástroj pro nastavování a kontrolu pravidel ji označilo 55 % respondentů. V oblasti reklamy na alkohol funguje samoregulace vedle zákonných pravidel a podle Rady pro reklamu umožňuje nastavovat přísnější standardy, než jaké vyžaduje legislativa.
Zdroj: Průzkum „Regulace konzumace alkoholu“, Ipsos pro Radu pro reklamu, srpen 2026, 1042 respondentů
Zdroj: Průzkum „Regulace konzumace alkoholu“, Ipsos pro Radu pro reklamu, srpen 2026, 1042 respondentů
Zdroj: Průzkum „Regulace konzumace alkoholu“, Ipsos pro Radu pro reklamu, srpen 2026, 1042 respondentů
Zdroj: Průzkum „Regulace konzumace alkoholu“, Ipsos pro Radu pro reklamu, srpen 2026, 1042 respondentů
Průzkum agentury Ipsos pro Radu pro reklamu byl realizován v srpnu 2026 na vzorku 1042 respondentů. Je ke stažení zde.
Around two-thirds of adult Czechs currently use artificial intelligence. Although most of them have a positive attitude towards it, the question remains as to how much they can trust its answers. According to a survey by the STEM/MARK agency, 60 per cent of AI users are unsure whether the output they receive from the tool is actually correct. According to the survey results, users would therefore appreciate it if AI could distinguish more clearly between verified information, estimates and situations where it is simply unsure.
According to the research, 85 per cent of AI users have a positive attitude towards it. They also use it more frequently and for a wider range of tasks, such as searching for information, obtaining practical advice, translations, generating images or working with technical information. Conversely, people with a negative attitude towards AI use it less frequently and for a narrower range of activities.
Trust is not just a matter of satisfaction
Doubts about the accuracy of answers are not, however, a problem exclusive to those who have a negative attitude towards artificial intelligence. 61 per cent of users with a positive attitude towards AI lack confidence that they can trust the AI’s output. Among users with a negative attitude, the figure is 52 per cent.
The link between trust and satisfaction is also interesting. The need for certainty regarding accuracy is cited more frequently by people who are satisfied with AI outputs. The answer may therefore be useful and well-formulated for the user, yet they may still be unsure whether the information it contains is correct. According to STEM/MARK, satisfaction decreases more significantly only when doubts about credibility are combined with the use of out-of-date data.
Users want to know where the answer comes from
The survey results also point to a desire for greater transparency. According to STEM/MARK, it would help users, for example, to be able to distinguish whether the AI has taken the information from a source, calculated it, derived it from available data, or whether it is general knowledge or merely an estimate. It is also important to know the time period to which the answer relates and how up-to-date the data used is.
It is precisely the ability to acknowledge uncertainty that may be one way of strengthening trust in AI. However, estimating uncertainty is not the same as verifying truthfulness. Language models are primarily trained to generate responses that match the prompt and are useful and plausible to the user. This does not, in itself, mean that they are factually correct.
Critical assessment of the outputs therefore remains, for the time being, the responsibility of the person using the AI. Verifying information and the ability to recognise potential errors therefore remain an important part of working with artificial intelligence tools.
The STEM/MARK survey was conducted in July 2026 via an online questionnaire on the National Sample panel. It involved 506 participants representing the internet population aged 18 and over, stratified by gender, age, education, region and size of place of residence.
Irdeto and blockchain data specialist Chainalysis are strengthening their partnership to tackle digital piracy and cryptocurrency-enabled cybercrime.
The companies are combining blockchain intelligence, payment disruption and international law enforcement coordination to target pirate IPTV, streaming and gaming operations.
Irdeto says its Cyber Services team can use Chainalysis Reactor to trace cryptocurrency transactions, identify exchange cash-out points and map financial links between pirate operators.
The partnership contributed to a Europol-led operation in November 2025 involving law enforcement agencies from more than 15 European countries. It identified 69 piracy-related sites, traced around $55 million (€46.9 million) in cryptocurrency transactions and referred 25 illicit IPTV services to major cryptocurrency exchanges for disruption.
Irdeto says its investigations over the past year indicate that cryptocurrency now represents around 20% of payment methods offered by digital pirates.
Mark Mulready, VP of Cyber Services at Irdeto, said cryptocurrency has become central to the increasingly sophisticated criminal piracy business, adding that the partnership enables investigators to “follow the money” and expose the networks behind these operations.
Chainalysis says blockchain transactions are highly traceable when investigators have the appropriate tools, allowing suspicious transaction patterns and wallets linked to illicit activity to be identified.
The companies say their collaboration is aimed at helping rights holders, broadcasters, sports leagues and streaming platforms disrupt pirate businesses at both their operational and financial levels.
Better access to legal streaming services was expected to weaken piracy. The reality, however, has proved different. Omdia’s study Next-Generation Anti-Piracy for TV and Video: Why the streaming era demands a shift from reaction to prevention shows that more than one in five online adults use unauthorized video sources, with the share significantly higher among sports fans and the most engaged viewers. Piracy has also undergone a technological transformation: instead of complex solutions aimed at technically savvy users, illegal services increasingly offer convenience and a user experience approaching that of legitimate platforms.
Published by research and advisory firm Omdia in July 2026, the study examines one of the paradoxes of the past decade. The expansion of streaming was expected to remove one of the main drivers of piracy: content that was difficult to access or too expensive. The assumption was that if viewers could access films, TV series or sports quickly, conveniently and at an acceptable price, there would be little reason to seek out illegal alternatives. Omdia’s data, however, suggests that this assumption was overly optimistic.
The legal offering has expanded, but piracy has not disappeared
The availability of legal streaming services has indeed increased dramatically. By the end of 2025, Omdia was tracking more than 1,670 online video services across 148 countries, with more than 600 offering live sports coverage. Despite this exceptionally broad legal offering, piracy has not receded; according to Omdia, it appears to have continued growing in many countries. The sheer volume of legally available content has therefore not solved the problem on its own.
The scale of the issue is illustrated by a consumer survey conducted by Omdia in November 2025 among 21,806 people aged 18 to 64 across nine countries. Overall, 21% of online adults said they frequently stream or download video from unauthorized websites, apps or devices.
Piracy rates are highest among the most engaged viewers
The study records the highest levels of piracy among the most highly engaged audiences. Among sports superfans, 43% of respondents use pirated content, while the figure rises to 46% among pay-TV sports superfans. In other words, while roughly one in five people across the overall surveyed population use unauthorized video, the share approaches one in two among one of the most commercially valuable audience segments. Piracy is therefore not simply an issue involving viewers who are unwilling to pay for content; it also affects audiences with a strong interest in premium paid content.
This creates a paradox: some of the most active consumers of illegal content are also among those with the strongest engagement with paid audiovisual content.
The study illustrates this trend even more clearly in the United States, one of the world’s most developed streaming markets. 29% of online adults report accessing pirated content, but among people aged 18 to 24, the figure rises to 41%. Among US pay-TV sports superfans, Omdia reports that the share exceeds 61%. Piracy is therefore not confined to consumers who refuse to pay for video. It significantly overlaps with audiences that already pay for content and are simultaneously among its most intensive consumers.
This generational dimension may have long-term implications. Younger audiences have grown up in an environment where they expect virtually immediate, on-demand access to content and, according to Omdia, have a low tolerance for friction and fragmentation in the legal streaming market. As this group gradually enters its peak earning and consumption years, the habits it forms today may influence the shape of piracy over the next decade.
Pirate services now compete not only on price, but also on convenience
The motivations behind piracy are often oversimplified within the industry as simply “viewers do not want to pay.” According to Omdia’s data, however, the reality is much more complex. The most frequently cited reason for using unauthorized video was that content was easier to find. In a survey of 4,499 respondents who reported using unauthorized sources, 33.1% cited easier content discovery as a reason. By comparison, 24% said they did not want to pay for content, while 22.2% considered the available alternatives too expensive.
The difference is even more pronounced among sports audiences. Easier content discovery was cited by 34.6% of sports fans and 36.5% of pay-TV sports fans. By contrast, the proportion citing simple unwillingness to pay as the main reason fell to 19.8% and 15.9%, respectively. The study also notes that among sports superfans, nearly four in ten pirate viewers identify ease of access as their primary motivation. For legitimate providers, this is an uncomfortable finding: illegal services are competing not only on price, but also on the convenience with which users can access content.
This also helps explain the apparent contradiction between the record number of legal services and the persistence of piracy. A larger number of platforms may mean a broader overall content offering, but fragmentation can also require viewers to determine which service holds the rights to a specific film, TV series or sports competition, manage multiple subscriptions and move between several different applications. The study specifically highlights younger viewers’ low tolerance for this fragmentation, while also showing that ease of finding content is one of the main advantages offered by unauthorized sources.
From hacked smart cards to smart-TV apps
It is not only consumer behaviour that has changed; the technology behind piracy has evolved as well. In the era of traditional pay television, piracy was to a large extent a hardware-based problem. Operators controlled the devices through which customers accessed content, making the security perimeter relatively well defined. Typical attacks included set-top-box manipulation, smart-card cloning or other forms of unauthorized access to broadcast signals. The emergence of new internet-based distribution technologies, however, created additional opportunities for abuse, making content protection more complex with every subsequent stage of technological development.
Omdia divides the evolution of piracy into several technological eras. Before 2000, a typical form of piracy involved obtaining unauthorized access to television broadcasts. Between approximately 2000 and 2005, the growth of the internet led to widespread file sharing through peer-to-peer networks and online storage services. Around 2010–2015, this was followed by DRM circumvention, transcoding and copying content from legitimate streaming services for redistribution. Towards the end of the 2010s, roughly 2017–2019, paid illegal IPTV services delivered through apps began gaining significant traction, increasingly resembling legitimate consumer products in the way they operated. The current phase, which began around 2020, is described by the study as “piracy as a service”. This means that content, particularly live sports and other events, is redistributed in real time and in high quality across multiple platforms.
Connected TV (CTV) platforms and streaming applications have become central to this transformation. The same technology that made legitimate streaming services significantly easier for consumers to access has provided similar opportunities to illegal services. Omdia estimates that piracy through apps and devices now accounts for the majority—and a growing share—of unauthorized video consumption. The attack surface has therefore shifted from a limited number of operator-managed devices to a world of billions of devices over which content providers have no direct control.
“Streaming has transformed piracy from a hardware attack into a software-defined cybersecurity challenge.”
Rik Turner, Principal Analyst, Cybersecurity, Omdia
When a pirate service looks like a legitimate one
From the perspective of an ordinary viewer, this represents a major shift. According to Omdia, convenience, quality and an interface optimized for television screens have helped move piracy away from specialist websites and tools and closer to mainstream consumer behaviour. The study, for example, describes illegal IPTV as paid subscription services delivered through applications that provide a user experience similar to legitimate platforms. Convenience, quality and TV-friendly interfaces are therefore helping move piracy from the technological fringe into mainstream consumer behaviour.
This development also creates the conditions for one of the most problematic forms of modern piracy: unauthorized restreaming of live content. A sports broadcast or other live event can be redistributed in real time through pirate CTV services, specialist websites and apps, or social platforms. Time works against the rights holder. In the case of a film or television series, removing an illegal copy may still have value even after some delay. In the case of a football match, however, the value of enforcement drops dramatically after the final whistle. As the study points out, by the time a pirate stream is taken down, the match may already be over and its economic value to the rights holder may have been irretrievably lost.
Streaming did not defeat piracy. It helped change the rules of the game
According to the Omdia study, piracy has changed substantially since the rise of streaming services. What was once a largely hardware-oriented attack within relatively closed distribution systems has evolved into a software-based, cloud-based and multi-platform problem. And while pirated content once required a degree of technical knowledge and compromises in convenience, some illegal services can now compete with legitimate platforms in terms of user experience.
This also changes the question streaming providers need to ask themselves. It is no longer enough simply to consider whether legal content is affordable enough. The data suggests that it may be just as important to ask whether customers can easily find that content, gain access to it and watch it without unnecessary friction. At the same time, providers must contend with pirate distribution that uses the same ecosystem of applications, connected devices and internet infrastructure as legitimate streaming. Piracy is therefore becoming both a user-experience issue and a cybersecurity challenge.
About the study:Next-Generation Anti-Piracy for TV and Video: Why the streaming era demands a shift from reaction to prevention was published in July 2026 by technology research and advisory firm Omdia. It was authored by Rob Gallagher, Principal Analyst for Consumer Technology and Services, and Rik Turner, Principal Analyst for Cybersecurity. The study was commissioned by Verimatrix and, in addition to examining how piracy is evolving in the streaming era, explores why the authors believe traditional reactive content-protection tools increasingly need to be combined with preventive security mechanisms. The analysis draws on Omdia’s ongoing research across television and online video, digital content, consumer behaviour, cybersecurity and enterprise technology. The consumer data used in the study includes an online survey conducted in November 2025 among 21,806 people aged 18–64 in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. Data on the reasons for using unauthorized video services is based on responses from 4,499 respondents across the same nine countries.
Nova Media Group closely monitors technological developments and the market shares of individual television platforms. It reviews the situation every six months. In an interview with MediaGuru.cz, TV Nova CEO Daniel Grunt also discusses the current position of the Oneplay service and its near-term development.
Terrestrial television broadcasting remains an important part of the distribution strategy for Nova Group, although its significance has been declining over the long term. TV Nova CEO Daniel Grunt told MediaGuru.cz that the company continuously evaluates developments in the share of terrestrial distribution and will use this as the basis for deciding on any future changes. At present, Nova has no plans to change either its distribution model or the way its Oneplay streaming service operates. Instead, it intends to continue developing Oneplay primarily through content, technological improvements and enhancements to the user experience. At the same time, Grunt acknowledges that if the importance of free-to-air broadcasting continues to decline, new approaches to content may also become an option in the future. “Everything will depend on how quickly the importance of terrestrial broadcasting declines,” he says.
Can you disclose how long your distribution agreement with České Radiokomunikace for broadcasting your channels terrestrially runs for? Unless it is confidential, how long is the agreement that came into effect sometime in 2020 or 2021?
I’m afraid that is commercially confidential, so I can’t comment on it.
I’m asking because you will certainly have noticed the major distribution change that your direct competitor, Prima Group, is planning. Does Nova have a plan for how terrestrial broadcasting will develop going forward?
The plan is very simple. It depends on the weight terrestrial broadcasting carries as a major source of revenue within our distribution mix. At the moment, it is still significant, accounting for around 35 to 36%. Television advertising also continues to be a crucial source of revenue for us. Its share is gradually declining, but it still stands at around 50%. If its importance were to begin declining significantly—which I don’t think will happen—we would of course reassess the situation. At present, however, we see no reason to make any changes.
So this is not something you expect to have to address in the next few years. I’m also asking because 2030 is often mentioned as a milestone for the future of terrestrial broadcasting, as that is when the frequencies allocated by the Czech Telecommunications Office to nationwide networks are due to expire. So nothing will change before then?
I can’t guarantee that. As I said, everything will depend on how quickly the importance of terrestrial broadcasting declines. Just a few years ago, it accounted for more than 50%; today, if I remember correctly, it is around 35%. That is a relatively rapid decline. We therefore review the situation every six months and adjust our strategy accordingly. So we cannot say that anything is guaranteed for the next five or six years. Everything will depend on how strong terrestrial broadcasting remains.
And you still cannot disclose the year until which the current agreement with České Radiokomunikace remains in force?
I can’t.
Nova is strong in both pillars, free-to-air and premium content. Are you considering moving some free content behind a paywall at some point in the future?
That is one of the potential scenarios and, as I said at the beginning, it will all depend on how the decline in terrestrial distribution develops going forward.
Moving some free content behind a paywall is one of the possible scenarios for the future. The key factor, however, will be the further development of terrestrial distribution and the pace of its decline.
As far as Oneplay is concerned, its offering has long since expanded beyond early releases of Nova’s original titles and Oneplay Originals, with some fairly attractive acquisitions now appearing on the service as well.
A lot of that has to do with the strength of the Oneplay subscriber base itself. We are the largest streaming service in the Czech Republic, so we need to offer the broadest and most diverse range of content possible and appeal to as many target groups as we can. That is the only way we can continue to grow. Our goal remains to bring Czech viewers the very best content, whether that means Czech productions or acquired titles selected specifically with Czech audiences in mind.
What are your customer satisfaction surveys currently telling you? How do customers perceive Oneplay in 2026, and what do they expect from it?
I have to say that in the 15 months since Oneplay launched in March 2025, perceptions of the brand have changed dramatically. The beginning was challenging, of course. Users of both Voyo and O2 TV moved from services they were familiar with to a new platform with a new user interface and a new brand. On top of that, the price increased. But the situation began to turn around quickly. What helped us above all was the content we offer on Oneplay and the way we present it to users. We try to make it easier for them to navigate the service and help them find exactly what is relevant to them. At this point, Oneplay’s NPS is already approaching the levels achieved by Voyo, which was a much-loved brand (NPS = Net Promoter Score, a metric indicating how well regarded a service is based on customers’ willingness to recommend it, editor’s note.).
What does that score tell you in practical terms?
NPS tells us how likely you are to recommend a particular service or product to people you know. It is measured on a scale from 0 to 10, with the resulting score ranging from minus 100 to plus 100. Scores of 9 and 10 are positive, 7 and 8 are neutral, while scores of 6 or below count negatively. So it is a fairly strict metric. We are currently achieving strongly positive scores.
Are you considering offering Oneplay to operators as part of a bundled package, as Netflix, Disney+ or HBO Max do, for example?
We are not considering changing the distribution model. At present, Oneplay has two operators. Nova operates the so-called B2C customer base, meaning customers who subscribe directly, while O2 serves customers of O2 services. So we have these two operators, and we do not plan to change that.
Your competitor Prima announced an agreement with BBC Studios on 10 August that will allow it, as well as T-Mobile, to offer the BBC Player service in the Czech Republic. Are there any companies, whether global players or multinational groups, with which you are considering taking a similar approach, or are you pursuing a different path?
There is a broad range of potential partners we are considering. We are in talks with some of them, we have ended discussions with others, and we continuously assess further opportunities. It always depends on the specific commercial terms and whether a particular partnership makes sense for us. Discussions are therefore ongoing, but at this point we have not concluded any agreement.
Is there anything that is already close to being finalised?
Not at this point.
Are you planning any technological upgrades for Oneplay or anything else that would affect how the service operates going forward? I mean features such as multilingual audio, subtitles and so on.
That particular feature has actually been available on Oneplay since launch, although it was not available on Voyo. The reason it is not available for all content has to do with licensing rights and content suppliers. A large proportion of the titles on Oneplay are still governed by contractual terms negotiated back in the Voyo era, when multilingual audio, for example, was not included in the agreement. Or the supplier simply does not have additional language versions available. We therefore have to renegotiate these terms gradually and then add the relevant audio tracks or subtitles.
And will there be any other technological upgrades?
Technological upgrades are happening continuously; it is a never-ending process. As far as changes that customers will actually see are concerned, we will be improving the user interface during the second half of the year. That will be one of the most significant visible changes.
What exactly does that mean? What will be changing?
We will be redesigning the home page to make it even cleaner and easier to navigate, so viewers can find what they are looking for more easily. One of the key issues for us—and something we see as one of the biggest problems facing the entire industry—is that viewers find it very difficult to navigate the sheer amount of content available. They are overwhelmed by choice. At Oneplay, we therefore want to do everything we can to make choosing content as easy as possible. That means improving both the user interface and the recommendation algorithm, which we develop and refine ourselves. The aim is to reduce the amount of time viewers need to decide what they want to watch.
Illegal streaming is costing the UK economy at least £1.35 billion a year and is linked to the loss of more than 10,000 jobs, according to a report commissioned by anti-piracy initiative BeStreamWise.
The Price of Piracy, produced by WPI Economics, estimates that piracy across sport, film and television results in 10,400 fewer jobs across the economy. Of these, 4,200 are in broadcasting and media production, with a further 6,200 in related sectors including advertising, publishing, retail and the wider creative industries.
The report also puts the annual loss in tax revenues at £366 million. BeStreamWise said this is equivalent to the cost of employing around 9,400 qualified NHS nurses, providing 140 million free school meals or funding 43 million childcare hours.
BeStreamWise is calling for a coordinated response from government and industry, including greater consumer awareness of the risks associated with piracy and measures to make illegal services more difficult to find and access.
Sir John Whittingdale MP, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Intellectual Property, said the findings should be a “wake-up call” for government and Parliament.
“This report provides concrete evidence that piracy costs the UK economy more than £1 billion every year and jeopardises thousands of creative industry jobs,” he said. “It also directly exposes consumers to the risk of fraud.”
Matt Hibbert, Group Director Anti-Piracy at Sky, said illegal streaming diverts money from investment in British television, film and sport, while exposing consumers to fraud, scams and identity theft.
The report argues that lost income limits broadcasters’ ability to reinvest in new programming and independent production. It also notes that sports-rights revenues help fund women’s sport, grassroots participation and talent development.
Liz Bales, Chief Executive of the British Association for Screen Entertainment, said tackling piracy requires a more integrated approach as viewing habits and piracy tactics evolve.
Friend MTS and AgileTV have completed the first integration of AgileTV’s content delivery network (CDN) with Friend MTS’ server-side watermarking technology, allowing operators to deploy premium content protection more quickly.
The pre-integrated solution combines Friend MTS’ watermarking platform with the AgileTV CDN, enabling operators using either technology to add the other with reduced integration effort. The companies say the approach is designed to accelerate deployment while maintaining video quality for premium live sports and entertainment services.
When combined with Friend MTS’ piracy monitoring platform, the solution enables operators to identify subscriber accounts used to source illegal streams and, if required, automatically disable those accounts in real time.
The integration uses server-side A/B watermarking, with the AgileTV CDN generating uniquely watermarked streaming sessions based on subscriber session tokens. This allows pirated streams to be traced back to individual subscriber accounts without affecting the viewing experience.
The companies will demonstrate the joint solution at IBC2026, showing how subscriber-level watermarking supports rapid piracy detection and enforcement.
This announcement reflects a wider industry trend towards embedding content protection directly into video delivery infrastructure rather than treating it as a separate system.
Server-side watermarking has become increasingly important as sports rights holders demand stronger anti-piracy measures. Unlike DRM, which aims to prevent unauthorised access, forensic watermarking enables operators to identify the source of leaked streams after they appear online.
