Dodgy boxes are skimming 40% from GAA streaming services

Irish Examiner

26-04-2025

A company which operates TV streaming services for sporting organisations including Cork, Kerry, Tipperary, and Waterford GAA believes 'dodgy boxes' are now skimming off 40% of its revenue and threatening jobs.
Clubber currently operates GAA streaming in 14 counties to access more than 1,500 matches annually, including club and various age grade competitions. Clubber founder Jimmy Doyle said the company has "thousands" of subscribers but the business is being undermined by the proliferation of illegal streaming services.
"It's not unreasonable for us to assume that there is at least 40% leakage right now of people who are just watching on the dodgy box. That's hugely damaging for a small company like us, trying to make our way in the world. It's a major problem," said Mr Doyle.
Clubber signed a deal with Cork GAA earlier this year. Clubber declined to discuss details of the deal but estimates put the value of the three-year agreement at €500,000. The company also has deals in counties including Offaly, Kilkenny, Louth, Longford, Laois, Wexford, and Monaghan.
Illegal TV streaming is now a multimillion-euro industry in Ireland through 'dodgy boxes' and 'cracked' Amazon Fire sticks accessing everything from movies and TV to live Irish sport. Estimates of the number of 'dodgy boxes' in use in Ireland vary from 170,000 to as high as 400,000.
"Counties need to get paid for the rights," said Mr Doyle. "That's their way to generate revenue from their product, and they push it back down into the clubs and into the growth of the game. So that's only fair. We have about 15 people working directly for us, and we have a huge network of videographers and commentators in every county that we operate in. So if we go, all of these guys are going out of jobs as well."
Mr Doyle said that ultimately, live streaming of club matches "will struggle to continue if the problem persists or gets worse". "People need to understand that it's not always getting one over on Sky. It's theft from a small business and others like us. You're taking that out of my company's pocket and our ability to stay in business.
"For me, it's the same as walking into your corner shop and taking a loaf of bread and milk and walking out the door."
The ubiquitous nature of illegal streaming and a perceived public acceptance is affecting all players in the broadcasting market.
Clubber workers prepare their cameras to stream the Walsh Cup match between Laois and Kilkenny. The company believes it's losing up to 40% of its business to illegal streaming services.
It was during the heady days of the pandemic that Jimmy came up with the brainwave of turning his passion for sports into his business. "I'm living in Dublin for nearly 30 years. I was working in Microsoft about five years ago, during Covid, and I just saw the opportunity with streaming for club games in Ireland. In fairness to most counties, in a few weeks they were able to quickly put together solutions and you could see the appetite that was out there for people to watch these games. So, I decided to take a bet on this.
"Being able to do this on a day-to-day basis is a joy, just to be involved in sports," said Jimmy. "But it doesn't come without its challenges."
Streaming piracy is now the biggest. While subscriber numbers at Clubber are in the thousands, and growing, the company now faces a serious challenge from illegal streaming of their content through 'dodgy boxes' and 'cracked' Amazon Fire sticks, which have become widespread across Ireland.
"I'll be honest, at the start, as we were growing, we felt it was almost a compliment that we were getting streamed onto the dodgy box," admits Jimmy. "We were like, 'oh, this is good awareness of the brand'. Now it's a major, major problem for us."
There is no official figure of how many illegal streams are being accessed on dodgy boxes in Ireland. One European report put the numbers at 170,000 boxes five years ago. More recent figures estimate it could be as high as 400,000.
Clubber signed a three-year deal with Cork GAA earlier this year, reported to be worth in the region of €500,000. The company also has GAA streaming deals in Offaly, Kilkenny, Louth, Longford, Laois, Wexford, and Monaghan.
Most other counties have in-house streaming or deals with other suppliers. Nationally, GAA+ launched earlier this month, replacing GAAGo and offering live streaming of 40 inter-county matches, including exclusive live coverage of last Saturday's Munster SFC Cork v Kerry thriller at Páirc Uí Chaoimh, and Tipperary and Limerick's Munster SHC dramatic draw at Semple Stadium.
Other sports like the League of Ireland's LOITV offer streaming services of its games.
Clubber has made considerable investment to keep their GAA business growing but it needs subscriber returns to make it work. Dodgy boxes are haemorrhaging those returns.
"It's not unreasonable for us to assume that there's at least 40% leakage right now of people who are just watching on the dodgy box. So that's hugely damaging for a small company like us, trying to make our way," said Jimmy, who said that ultimately, streaming of club and other matches "will struggle to continue if the problem persists or gets worse".
"We're a growing company. We have about 15 people working directly for us, but we have a huge network of videographers and commentators in every county that we operate in. If we go, you know, all of these guys are going out of jobs as well.
"For me it's the same as walking into your corner shop and taking a loaf of bread and milk and walking out the door. Would you walk down to your local pub and order a round and just walk out the door or sit in the corner and not pay for it? You just wouldn't."
Streaming services price list
Earlier this year, the US Chamber of Commerce's Global Innovation Policy Center estimated that digital piracy and illegal streaming services are costing the US economy about $30bn (€26bn) each year in lost revenue and could be costing 250,000 jobs worldwide, Bloomberg reported. It estimated the global impact of pirate streaming is about $71bn (€62bn) annually.
TV penetration has peaked globally, with numbers of TV package subscribers now going down. At the same time, more and more paid content streaming services are on the Irish market.
The Connected Lives survey, published by Pure Telecom in October 2024, found while streaming had increased in popularity, consumers were cutting back on annual subscriptions. The survey estimated annual spend on legal video streaming services by consumers in Ireland in 2024 at €1.1bn, down €200m on 2023.
Television viewing habits have changed considerably in recent years, with the growth of streaming, and platforms like TikTok.
But even with these changes, Sky EU and Ireland director of regulatory and corporate affairs Mark Carpenter believes the satellite TV giant is feeling the sting of streaming piracy. "We obviously wouldn't get 100% of people who pay for illegal services as subscribers but a large proportion would be," he said.
Mr Carpenter believes that the technical ease with which anyone can now access a stream has increased usage. "Previously, when people wanted to stream, you needed a Kodi box, or whatever. With a Fire Stick, people who are not particularly technically proficient are able to use these services."
The problem of 'dodgy boxes' isn't new. TV operators in Ireland have been trying to stop people illegally accessing their services for more than 30 years. Before Virgin and Sky were dominant players in the Irish market, services were operated in the 1980s in Ireland by companies like Cablelink and Cork Communications, which provided services in Limerick and Cork. Cork Communications operated as Cork Multichannel in the Rebel County, and introduced premium pay TV services in 1988. But no sooner had the set top convertor transcription boxes landed, than a market grew for "tapped" black boxes offering full unhindered TV access - the forerunner to today's illegal services.
Back then, Cork Multichannel were racking their brains trying to curb the use of "tapped" black boxes, and in 1994 came up with an elaborate plan to catch users. Capitalising on the World Cup frenzy as Ireland were playing in USA '94, the company announced a special free t-shirt offer which went out on a 'scrambled' channel that could only be seen on screen by those with 'fixed' boxes. A host of replies came in for the free t-shirt offer, though no prosecutions subsequently followed.
In 1994, Cork Multichannel carried out a free t-shirt sting operation to find out who was accessing premium content illegally.
Fast forward 31 years, and the focus has been on the operators of the illegal streaming services as opposed to individuals accessing them. In February, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) - an umbrella group representing TV operators and content streamers in Ireland and the UK - said that legal notices were issued in Cork, Dublin, Donegal, Offaly, Limerick, Louth, Clare, Westmeath and Laois on 13 operators of illegal TV streaming services. In the past two years, around 70 illegal streaming services have been shut down in Ireland.
Realistically, it's just a drop in the streaming landscape. Sky says Amazon must take greater responsibility. For its part, Amazon says the company is "in direct talks with Sky on how we can best tackle this issue".
"We are committed to protecting intellectual property rights," an Amazon spokesperson said. "We work to limit pirated content, including prohibiting apps that infringe the rights of third-parties on our Appstore and warning customers of the risks associated with installing or using apps from unknown sources."
Changing technology could help alter the landscape. Tyrone GAA TV, the county's in-house streaming service, saw numbers slump from 15,000 subscribers to 7,000 before subsequently recovering. 'The increase was due to range of factors including the deployment of software technologies and identification of the accounts used by the IPTV (internet protocol TV) pirates," the county secretary's annual report said. 'Making the pirate services unreliable did lead to many of those with 'dodgy firesticks' not being willing to take a risk with an unreliable illegal service for subsequent fixtures."
Jimmy Doyle said staying one step ahead of illegal streamers isn't easy. "We're constantly working on ways to block them and we have a couple of things that hopefully this year we can make a stand against them on it but it's a constant battle.
"Sometimes they're stealing it from the back end and figuring out how to get access in that way and putting it out on their own CDNs (content delivery network), which is basically cloud solutions to distribute the content you every individual user.
"We had a summit recently with a lot of other broadcasters in the Irish market, people like Sky, Premier Sports, Virgin Media, everybody really who is in the live sports arena, and gardaí were part of that conversation and they're really looking to clamp down on this in a more severe way."
On the ground, Sky says it has investigators checking on pubs which show live sport to confirm they are paying for services, while it is also investing in technology to try and curb illegal streamers.
Last year, Sky signed a deal to sponsor Irish football for €1.7m annually, and the company found it hard to see the funny side when some fans had shirts with 'firestick' and 'dodgy box' replacing the Sky logo across the chest.
The only upside of the use of dodgy boxes, from Sky's point of view, is that there is now public awareness. "There's a lot of coverage of this and so there's no doubt anymore that it is an illegal activity," said Mr Carpenter.
For Jimmy Doyle, there is no grey area. "The bottom line is people need to understand that it's not just about getting one over on Sky. It's theft from a small business and others like us. You're taking that out of my pockets and my company's pocket and our ability to stay in business."