The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has taken down one of the world's largest live sports streaming piracy rings, with over 821 million visits last year.
ACE says the Markkystreams Vietnam-based operation was the largest illegal sports streaming service it has shut down to date.
The piracy ring primarily targeted audiences across the United States and Canada, streaming sports events daily from all the U.S. sports leagues and global leagues of every category. ACE says this operation affected all its members, including sports tier members DAZN, beIN Sports, and Canal+.
"The shutdown of this globally notorious live sports piracy ring is a huge victory in our campaign against the piracy of live sports programs and follows other recent successful actions by ACE and law enforcement in Vietnam," said Larissa Knapp, Executive Vice President at the Motion Picture Association (MPA), on Thursday.
"ACE's live sports members face a unique threat when it comes to digital piracy, as live sports broadcasts lose substantial commercial value once the game ends. The takedown serves as a warning to piracy operators everywhere – including operators in live sports piracy – that ACE will identify and shut down their illegal operations."
The anti-piracy group says the ring's Hanoi-based operators handed over control to 138 domains, including the bestsolaris[dot]com, streameast[dot]to, markkystreams[dot]com, crackstreams[dot]dev, and weakspell[dot]to domains.
"This website is no longer available due to copyright infringement. Do not put yourself at risk by using or subscribing to illegal streaming services," a banner displayed on the seized websites reads.
ACE is a coalition of over 50 media and entertainment companies, including the world's largest film studios and television networks, focused on shuttering illegal streaming services since June 2017.
Its governing board includes Amazon, Apple TV+, Universal Studios, The Walt Disney Studios, Netflix, Paramount Global, Sony Pictures, and Warner Bros. Discovery.
Since its launch, ACE has taken down a long list of piracy platforms, including the Openload and Streamango streaming providers in October 2019, the pirate IPTV service Beast IPTV in December 2020, the 123movies.la streaming site in May 2021, and the world's largest anime pirate site Zoro.to in July 2023.
ACE also works with law enforcement organizations like the U.S. Department of Justice, Europol, and Interpol in operations targeting large-scale illegal streaming rings.
Since the start of the year, it helped shutter a pirate TV streaming network that made millions of dollars since its launch in 2015, convict five men linked to the Jetflicks illegal streaming service, and, most recently, dismantle a pirate streaming service with over 22 million users worldwide that was making over €250 million ($263M) each month.
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