In March 2023, the lower house of the Italian Parliament passed a new anti-piracy law that will make it a lot quicker for Italian ISPs to respond to and suppress illegal streaming websites. Sports bodies and broadcasters alike have been strong proponents of the new legislation, which is likely to be approved with minimal changes by the Senate and thus enacted this summer, and which is expected to provide ISPs and copyright holders – as well as law enforcement – with more effective weapons in the fight against content piracy in the country.

Illegal live sports streaming is likely to be most directly affected by the new legislation. The current anti-piracy laws require that, following reports of violations of copyright and illegal streaming, a judge issues a court order to “take down” the website – a process that typically takes days from when the violation is first reported. As a result, under the current regime, by the time an injunction is issued against a website providing illegal access to a live sporting event, the event is almost certainly over – significantly reducing the effectiveness of the enforcement mechanisms in protecting the value of live sports rights.

The draft legislation, conversely, is expected to enable ISPs to “obscure” pirate websites within 30 minutes of them being flagged by copyright owners – that is, in most cases, before the end of the event in question being pirated. The new legislation would bring the Italian anti-piracy enforcement mechanism in line with other countries in Europe - such as the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Ireland - where live blocking injunctions have been applied efficiently.

Sports piracy has direct economic effects on sports broadcasting markets. Easy access to pirate sites can dissuade fans from subscribing to legal services, thus reducing the subscription and advertising revenue generated by sports broadcasters. Indeed, a recent study commissioned by Synamedia and conducted by Ampere estimated the annual global sport broadcasting revenue lost to piracy to be $9.8bn. 

Furthermore, the impact of piracy on sports broadcasters’ revenues has implications for their ability to spend on sports rights, since these cannot then be monetised to their full extent. By tightening anti-piracy enforcement measures, sports rights owners hope to benefit from higher rights fees.  Following the passing of the anti-piracy law in Italy, for example, Serie A chief executive Luigi De Siervo claimed that the new law could result in as much €150m in additional TV rights revenues. Of course, that depends on the ability of broadcasters to convert those who watch Serie A on pirate streams into paying subscribers. Ampere’s Sport Consumer data shows that, among sports fans who follow Serie A in Italy, about a quarter (26%) say they would be willing to pay to watch live Serie A coverage and yet do not subscribe to either Sky or DAZN, the current broadcast partners in the country.

Of those 26%, about half (51%) use pirate streams on a weekly basis to watch live sports. Assuming that all of these fans pirate weekly to watch Serie A, persuading just one in three of them to pay would result in a 10% increase (or roughly 330k) in overall subscriptions to services that currently show live Serie A games in Italy.


For that to be a possibility, however, rightsholders and legislators will continue to be responsive to further developments in pirates' strategies to circumvent blocks and exploit loopholes, thus reducing the effeciveness of the new anti-piracy measures.