The new season of the English Premier League started a few weeks ago. The English top football tier draws a lot of attention and viewership from all around the world. And with that, the problem of illegal streaming comes as well. As the auction for the league’s broadcasting rights in the UK are coming up, Premier League has now ramped up its efforts to crackdown on illegal streaming.

A spokesperson of the Premier League stated that the league will take a tougher stance on illegal streaming. The administration of the league has hired several lawyers and digital investigators to find, shut down and prosecute pirate sites. The crackdown comes as the league prepares for the auction of the league’s broadcasting rights in the UK, which were previously sold for around GBP 5 billion over a three-year period.

Just a few months ago, five men who were operating an illegal streaming business in the UK were sentenced to jail for a total of more than 30 years. The operation offered cheap subscriptions for Premier League games, serving at least 50,000 customers. The five men made more than GBP 7 million from the operation and the prosecution was the world’s largest-ever for an illegal streaming network.

The Premier League is also one of the most valuable sports rights in the Nordics in terms of vieing. This spring, over 3.3 million 15-74-year-olds in the Nordics stated interest in watching the league on TV/online – making it the league with the highest interest share in the Nordics.

More on Premier league and over 100 other sports leagues/tournaments are presented in Mediavision’s newly published 2023 sports analysis. For more information regarding this report, don’t hesitate to contact us at info@mediavision.se.

Earlier this month, Spotify and Patreon announced an integration between the platforms, enabling access to subscriber-exclusive content on Spotify. Last week at the Podcast Movement event, Spotify’s director of Podcast Product, Austin Lamon, announced a slate of updates to the podcast business.

One of Spotify’s updates is the customization and selection of previews for podcast creators. It builds on Spotify’s new discovery page, which was introduced this spring. The discovery page features automatically generated episode previews, appearing in Spotify users home feeds. Soon, podcast creators themselves will be able to custom their content previews, by choosing what to show and make it more personal. In addition to this, Spotify’s new analytics tools will enable creators to see the total number of impressions they have generated, how they’ve trended, and where on Spotify those impressions came from.

The new customization tools will also be available on the podcast creators show pages. The creators will be able to modify their page by linking social accounts, highlight favorite episodes and recommend other content on Spotify to their listeners. As part of the integration with Patreon, creators will also be able to add a banner to their show page to promote the subscriber-only content. The new updates are expected to go live on Spotify in October.

The next domestic broadcasting rights owners for the 3F Superliga were announced Monday. From the summer of 2024 until 2030, Viaplay Group and TV 2 will share the broadcasting rights for the Danish top tier football league.

Viaplay Group thereby extends its broadcasting rights for the 3F Superliga. The company has held the rights since 1998 and from the next season, the rights will be shared with TV 2. The sports director of TV 2 expressed that the company has wanted the 3F Superliga rights for a long time.

“This is a day of joy for us at TV 2. 3F Superliga has long been at the top of our wish list, as the rights comprise everything that TV 2 wants to stand for. It is Danish. It is close to our viewers and users.” says Frederik Lauesen, sports director at TV 2.

TV 2 and Viaplay will share the broadcasting rights equally. TV 2 will broadcast the first, fourth and sixth selections of games in the first round. The following round TV 2 will have the second, third and fifth selections of games. After that, the broadcasters switch the selection order.

Prognosen: Du kommer få betala mer för sämre serier – Expressen

Pirat-tv del av Viaplays fall – Aftonbladet

Nearly half of Nordic SVoD viewers would pay up to EUR 3 extra monthly for more local content – Telecompaper

Nordiske streamingkunder vil betale ekstra for mere lokalt indhold – Mediawatch

Hushållen öppnar plånboken för nordiskt innehåll – Dagens Media

Trendbrott: Fler svenskar piratkopierar film och tv – Dagens Nyheter

Streamingbranschen har fått växtvärk – Sveriges Radio

Poll: Illegal streaming on the rise in Nordic countries – Yle