The International Olympic Committee’s decision to sell TV rights to the Paris 2024 Games to subscription services has led to a huge increase in viewers watching on illegal streams.
The IOC’s move has caused frustration among some fans at being denied immediate access to sport that has historically been available on free-to-air channels.
Analysis conducted by online intelligence company YieldSec has revealed there were 267m illegal streams of the Paris 2024 Olympics globally.
That was more than three times the number of illegal views generated earlier this summer by Euro 2024, which lasted more than two weeks longer.
Almost 36 per cent of the illegal streaming of the Olympics took place in North America, with 27 per cent in Europe.
Both are markets where the primary Olympic broadcaster is a subscription service.
In the United States NBC paid £5.9bn for exclusive rights for four Olympic cycles between 2016 and 2032, while in Europe Warner Bros Discovery is paying around £2bn for TV rights over the same period.
The latter deal also includes a sub-licensing provision for free-to-air broadcasters, however, with the BBC showing 250 hours of coverage from Paris on two channels in the UK.
The huge array of sports on offer at the Olympics and a daily timetable of up to 15 hours of action makes the event particularly vulnerable to piracy, as reflected in YieldSec’s analysis.
Euro 2024 earlier in the summer attracted 75m illegal streams globally, with a peak of 13.5m for Spain’s victory over England in the final.