European added value

• Author: Panella, Lauro
• Pages: 11-13

Challe nges facing sports e vent organisers in the digital environme nt

11

5. European added value

This s ection presents the annual value o f the mark et for o nline piracy of sports events i n the EU,

the amount of VAT avoided, the damage th at on-l ine piracy cau ses to legal broadcasters in

terms of lost r evenue, and job disruptio n each year in the sports event broadcast market.

The analysis is based on the available data. It is useful to point out that the data should be treated

with caut ion as companies o perating in the sports and rela ted co ntent market u sually also op erate

in other audiovisual content s ource markets (i.e. films, TV series, sports events, documentaries, etc. ).

In addition, a con sider able s hare of illegal business m odels do not rely on subscription fees, but

rather their rev enues come fr om spre ading m alware, phis hing activ ities, personal data theft, and

advertis ement. It is t herefore very difficult to ca lculate these types of 'seco nd-ord er' cos ts and harms

to consumers , in monetary terms. As the illegal IPTV free streaming port al business model

represen ts a non-negligibl e share of ill egal businesses, the estimated cost of pi racy may well

be underesti mated.

Combining the Eurostat data21 on population, and the average share of people wh o regula rly watch

internet s treamed TV (live or cat ch-up) from TV broadcasters,22 with the share of IPR infringers23 and

the average monthly unauthorised IPTV cost per user by country,24 it is pos sible to calculate the

average nu mber of househo lds that access il legal content throu gh an illegal subscripti on, the

total amount of il legal revenues generated by illegal subscriptions to stream ing platf orms

and the total amount of VAT avoided.

Based o n data for 2018 and 2019, Figu re 1 shows that in 2019 7.6 million subscriptions were made

to ille gal br oadca stin g plat forms in t he EU . These subs criptions gener ated around €522 million in

ill icit revenues and €113.5 million in avoided VAT.

Comb ining the se estimatio ns with data 25 on the monthly average revenue for a legal subscription

in each Member State (by technological means of broadcasting), it is poss ible to estimate the to tal

amount of money lost by legal economic operators. This, with the €113.5 million in a voi ded

VAT, could be considered t he economic added value of a coordinated EU response to the issue of

onlin e piracy in spor ts eve nt br oa dcas ting .

21 Eurostat database: Populat ion on 1 January .

22 Eurostat database: I ndividual s – internet activities.

23 EUIP O – EUROPOL, Intellectual Property Crime Threat Assessment 2019, p. 28.

24 EUIP O, Il legal I PTV in the European Union, 2019, p. 55.

25 Ampe re A nalysi s, OBS/ Amper e A nalysi s (20 19 ), Yearbook 2019, European Audiovisual Observatory.