The second report published by Grant Thornton, carried out in partnership with the Live Content Coalition – a group of representatives of leading European live content producers, broadcasters, and exhibitors – demonstrates no discernible impact of the European Commission’s Recommendation of May 4th 2023 on combating of sports and other live events. It clearly indicates that the situation continues to deteriorate for live events organisers, broadcasters and workers alike.

The analysis covers the full year’s data for 2024 and includes a comparison with Grant Thornton’s previous analysis covering only the first half of 2024.

Key findings:

• 10.8 million takedown notices relating to unauthorised retransmission of live events were submitted to intermediaries.
• Over 81 per cent of these notices did not result in suspension of the illegal retransmission.
• Only 2.7 per cent of infringements were acted upon within 30 minutes and 20 per cent took over 120 minutes for action.
• Dedicated Server Providers received more notices requesting the suspension of retransmissions than Online Platforms and other hosting providers combined, accounting for 52 per cent of all notices submitted across 2024. Eighty-nine per cent of these notices did not lead to suspension of the illegal retransmission.
• Regarding cooperation agreements, the analysis shows that of the notices submitted based on such agreements 86 per cent were directed to online platforms. These have an 84 per cent effectiveness in achieving suspension. Of the notices submitted to Dedicated Server Providers, only 1 per cent were submitted in line with a cooperation agreement. While cooperation agreements can help improve the likelihood of suspensions when correctly implemented, for Dedicated Server Providers complementary measures are needed.

Grant Thornton will continue to monitor the impact of the European Commission’s Recommendation on piracy of live events. The third edition of the analysis will be released in Q3 2025 reporting on key trends during the year and will offer a comprehensive view of progress through year on-year analysis.

“The latest Grant Thornton report shows that piracy of live content is continuing at pace in Europe in spite of the Recommendation,” commented Mark Lichtenhein, chair of the Sports Rights Owners Coalition, and Grégoire Polad, director general, Association of Commercial Television and Video on Demand Services in Europe. “European broadcasters, sports leagues and other players in the live events environment work tirelessly to protect content from theft. Current measures are clearly not working, whilst technological advances are making piracy easier and more lucrative than ever for criminals. We once again call on the Commission to urgently bring forward legislation requiring the intermediaries, protected by safe harbour provisions, to remove infringing content within the live window, when notified. Organised crime remains the sole beneficiary of this legislative inaction, and it is imperative that we protect the survival of the live events sector in Europe.”

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Categories: Articles, Business, Content, OTT, OTT, Piracy, Policy, Regulation, Rights

Tags: European Commission, Grant Thornton, Live Content Coalition, piracy, Sports Rights Owners Coalition