Livestreaming is increasingly mainstream. Social behemoths like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook all come with the feature baked-in and prominently displayed. With just a flick of a button, anyone anywhere can broadcast anything to hundreds of thousands of people.
Anything. Literally anything. Like, er, a boxing match only available through pay-per-view (PPV).
A Scarborough man is currently in hot water after a friend purportedly streamed a high-profile PPV boxing match to over 4,000 people. According to the Teeside Gazette, 34 year old Craig Foster paid £19.95 to watch Anthony Joshua’s fight with Wladimir Klitshko from his satellite TV provider, Sky.
Foster says that at some point during the night, a friend picked up his iPad and used it to stream the bout to an audience of 4,250 cheapskates.
Sky quickly noticed, and sent the pugilism enthusiast a bill for £85,000, which the company says represents the revenue lost from his stream.
This isn’t the first time a paid TV provider has cracked down on a customer streaming content. Earlier last year, an Aussie man went viral after his cable service called him mid-stream of a bout between Quade Cooper and Jack McInnes.