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The Nairobian

REVEALED: Kenya among countries with highest illegal Premier League viewers

Premier League

By Clinton Nyabuto | Jul 10, 2019

Kenya has been listed among countries with highest illegal Premier League viewers causing heavy losses to Premier League clubs.

This is according to a study carried out by American sponsorship valuation firm GumGum Sports and London-based digital piracy experts MUSO.

The study has revealed that illegal streaming is causing Premier League clubs to lose around £1million (approximately Sh128 million) in sponsorship per game.

Sampling eight matches from the top flight last term, the study showed that each game attracted an average illegal audience of 7.1 million viewers.

China had the highest number of illegal viewers (one million) while Nigeria, India and Vietnam also featured in the list. The UK was ranked 11th on the list for digital piracy views.

“Clubs and sponsors have never been able to quantify media exposure from unauthorised streaming, which over the years amounts to billions of dollars in unrealised value,” said GumGum Sports vice president of partnerships and strategy Jeff Katz.

“Now we have a unique data set that gives the advantage to brand sponsors while also enabling clubs to better demonstrate the value they are driving on behalf of corporate partners,” Katz added.

Andy Chatterley, MUSO co-founder and chief executive, said: “Piracy audiences have too long been disregarded as offering no real value to rights holders and distributors, but the reality is that these huge audiences still see the same shirt sponsors and commercials as people watching the game via a licensed channel.”

“Sports rights owners are now waking up to the fact that they are leaving sponsorship money on the table by not measuring, understanding and gaining insight from the piracy audience,” Chatterley added.

Sky Sports, BT Sport and Amazon are the only channels with rights to show Premier League games live in the United Kingdom.

Digital piracy is a big threat to the Premier League which relies heavily on the income from live TV deals.

DAILY TRIVIA ANSWER: Madagascar