Combat sports, like boxing and mixed martial arts, that produce telecasts for pay-per-view frown on people illegally livestreaming their product, especially when 3 million people get to watch a $99 product for free.
And while the UFC and networks like Showtime and HBO are trying to crack down on illegal streams, they’re going to have to deal with the ingenuity of people who are desperate to watch a premium show without having to pay for it.
Take this fan, for example, who livestreamed last Saturday’s UFC PPV but who had an inventive way to get around anybody shutting down his stream.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhBIIgnMkaw
And check out his reaction here.
https://twitter.com/KanyeTwittee/status/937569920753258496
According to the Verge, the fan livestreamed the $60 PPV fight card on multiple platforms, including Twitch, and he pretended that he was playing the UFC 3 video game in order to fool anybody trying to stop illegal streams.
A.J. Lester, the man behind the inventive idea, said on Twitter he had been banned for three days on Liveraise for the stunt. He also said he didn’t expect to go viral.
https://twitter.com/alester2010/status/937696025384452096
It was a great idea to bring premium sports content to the masses, but unfortunately, he’s gone viral now—one of the tweets showing him has more than 75,000 retweets and 170,000 likes.
How has he pretended to play a ufc fight on stream to avoid getting copyrighted LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL pic.twitter.com/I4ykqwqrTA
— Aaron (@TheRealSMA) December 3, 2017
However, Twitter and Twitch caught on and blocked those videos. Now it means he’ll have to figure out another way to livestream fights in the future if he wants to avoid copyright infringement and getting himself banned from the streaming sites he frequents.