That’s in part because in most U.S. sports, there is one main league (NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB) with 30 to 32 teams. Soccer works on a completely different plane. In Europe alone there are 53 leagues and thousands of teams. Only the top five or so leagues are followed internationally, but that still leaves hundreds of teams for fans to choose from. Imagine three or four different NFLs with each league somewhat similar in terms of quality—now envision trying to broadcast that.

Time zones are another factor. Sometimes, important games are on during a fan’s work hours. Diehards don’t want to wait to watch their favorite team play on tape delay, opting instead to watch right at their desks.

All of this creates a situation where fans in many parts of the world, especially areas where satellite TV coverage may be too expensive or may not even exist, must to go to the Internet to follow their favorite team. Sometimes this is legal, as was the case this past summer when the FIFA World Cup broke streaming records to the tune of 30 million viewers. Other times it’s not: More than 20 million people illegally watched the World cup as well. Peruse any online forum or simply do a Google Search and within seconds you’ll find a litany of pages solely devoted to sharing unsanctioned streams. Many illegal streams are set up by fans themselves, who take the risk of sharing their own legitimate television subscriptions for free online, sometimes making little to no money off the venture, motivated instead by an odd moral obligation to help people see the game they love.



Guilherme Neto has been running one of the most popular streaming curation sites, Ronaldo7.net since 2010. Based out of Portugal, Neto doesn’t do the illegal streaming himself, but instead aggregates the best feeds. His site is usually listed at top of any search for streams online, and with 3.5 million likes on Facebook there’s clearly a massive demand. "Not everyone has the means to pay for a $50 to 100 TV subscription package just so they can watch their favorite team play six to seven times a month," he told me. "These rates obviously vary by country or market, but it’s still too expensive for millions of people out there."



By not hosting the streams himself, Neto believes he remains inculpable; he provides the product to the public, but he’s not the one actually stealing it. "I honestly don’t see this as being anything illegal, all the streams we list are open to the public and can be found in many different search engines anyway," he said.

While easily accessed, streams are rarely pleasant to watch—the sites are usually unreliable, low quality, and ad-laden. Here’s an example of what you’re likely to come across if you head to a soccer streaming page:

Firstrowsports.eu

It’s a confusing advertising labyrinth of pop-ups, pop-unders, codecs, interstitials, and the even odd virus—this is how streamers make their money. Neto usually deals with streamers directly, most of them requesting to be included on his exclusive list of streams. "At the end of the day most of the streamers don’t really make that much money, just enough to keep going," he said. "Most of the advertisers pay on a performance basis, so they tend not to make much money from ‘regulars’ in the streaming scene, as they aren’t likely to get tricked into installing codecs, apps, or whatever they’re attempting users to do through their ads campaigns."