Streameast, the world’s largest illegal sports streaming site, has pitched its final inning, according to The Athletic. This follows a year-long investigation on the part of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) – a coalition of companies and film studios that includes Amazon, Netflix, and Paramount – which culminated in a Sunday night raid that led to the arrest of two men in Egypt. I will miss the site terribly, despite obviously having never interacted with it in any meaningful way.
Streameast, says The Atlantic, averaged a whopping 136 million monthly visits. If you could think of a major sport, odds are you could find it while sailing the site’s largely reliable waters. Many, many other sports streaming sites exist, but Streameast was comparatively sturdy and unwavering. An anchor. Some prominent games industry figures – who also presumably did not use the site, or perhaps even know what it was – have called this their “9/11,” given that NFL season is about to start.
Meanwhile, in my other neck of the woods, the MMA world, which is a cesspit I obsessively follow in spite of myself because it’s a good way to turn my brain off while watching terrible men pound theirs into mush, fans are apoplectic.
“NOOOOOO,” reads the current top thread on the UFC subreddit.
“Back when they'd play the Russian national anthem over [fighter] walkout songs, lol,” reminisced one commenter.
“I don't know why I loved those little touches so much,” replied another. “Made me feel like I was watching with a real fan.”
Commenters also poured one out for dudes who went on racist rants in Streameast chat boxes, of which there were a truly tremendous number.
Others on both the UFC subreddit and within various corners of the wider sporting web are fixated on The Principle Of The Thing: sports organizations have found more and more ways to nickel and dime fans, with the current subscription model potentially demanding hundreds or – if you’re a UFC fan, at least until next year – thousands of dollars per year across multiple services. Sites like Streameast function as modern-day Robin Hoods, stealing from multibillion-dollar corporations to give a few hours of entertainment to the poor (and make money via ads, millions of dollars in Streameast’s case, which muddies the waters perhaps more than a little).
There’s just one problem with the way many publications are framing this story: Streameast does not appear to be entirely gone. The illicit sports kingpin has historically gotten around shutdowns via a series of different URLs, many of which continue to function as of this publishing. ACE told The Atlantic that these are merely “copycats,” but they seem to be closely tied to the mothership.
The sporting powers that be and various national governments might eventually find a way to whack-a-mole all of the URLs into oblivion, but even then, illicit streaming sites tend to operate like Hydras; when one head gets chopped off, another rises up to take its place. If this truly proves to be Streameast’s demise, it will likely still be a long time before [DOZENS OF NAMES REDACTED, BECAUSE HOW WOULD I EVEN KNOW THEM] meet similar ends.
