For Mikael Santelli, vice president for rights and revenue protection at Sportradar, much can be done to protect the intellectual property rights of sports games.
From ensuring that the usage of sports content is authorized to securing revenue streams from skimmers, continuous effort has to be exerted to minimize the misuse of sports content, according to Santelli.
“You can never fully secure the misuse and leakages in sports streaming, but our job is to minimize this as much as possible,” Santelli said.
Partnering with federations to secure rights
Sportradar is a global leader in the collection and analysis of sports data, serving bookmakers, sports federations, and media companies. It partners with broadcasters, sports leagues, and federations to help protect the integrity and commercial interests of their games.
It is the official data provider for the National Basketball Association (NBA), Major League Baseball (MLB), NASCAR, International Tennis Federation (ITF), National Hockey League (NHL), FIFA, and UEFA, among others. In the Philippines, it is the Philippine Basketball Association’s (PBA) integrity partner.
Santelli said Sportradar is expanding its copyright protection services and working closely with sports federations to protect their content and monetize it properly.
“One of our key interests is the integrity of sports and sports data,” he said. “We want to make sure that content owned by federations is protected, monetized correctly, and that misuse and illicit activities are minimized.”
Building a global team to fight piracy
To address the growing threat of rights violations, Sportradar formed a global Rights & Revenue Protection team. The unit works with sports federations and leagues to build and execute tailored protection strategies.
This specialized team includes professionals with backgrounds in law enforcement, anti-piracy operations, military, risk intelligence, and anti-money laundering. They are tasked with detecting data misuse, gathering evidence, and enforcing piracy violations—particularly during high-profile sporting events.
Case study: Piracy down 48% in K League
Santelli highlighted Sportradar’s partnership with South Korea’s K League, which resulted in a 48% reduction in observed piracy over the past three years. Since 2019, Sportradar has served as the K League’s exclusive global distributor of both broadcast and audio-visual rights.
Through this agreement, Sportradar provided specialized intelligence services and improved broadcast quality to attract fans to official platforms. It also deployed investigative tools to track and prevent illegal streaming of matches.
“We have a strong working relationship with them,” Santelli said. “Through our technologies and investigative methods, and with K League’s support, we’ve made significant progress. This kind of collaboration is essential—we can’t do this in isolation.”
Adapting to a complex global piracy landscape
In a statement, Sportradar emphasized that anti-piracy enforcement must evolve in step with technology.
“Enforcement is complicated by a fragmented legal and regulatory landscape, especially given the cross-border nature of data distribution and web services,” the company said. “Sportradar works with partners in various jurisdictions to navigate these complexities, ensuring rights holders can take meaningful action.”
According to Santelli, piracy accounts for an estimated 6% of a sport’s total broadcast revenue—a significant loss.
“It’s quite substantial considering the size of the industry,” he noted. “We’re talking hundreds of millions in lost revenue across broadcasters, rights holders, and data providers.”
Collaboration and legislation are key
Santelli said that closer collaboration among rights holders, tech companies, platforms, and regulators is critical to curbing piracy.
“Efforts need to come from all sides—rights holders, technology firms, search platforms like Google, and social media,” he said. “When these forces work together, combined with strong legal action, we stand a much better chance.”
He cited Italy as a leader in anti-piracy legislation.
“They’ve passed laws requiring telecom providers to remove or disrupt pirated content within 30 minutes of notification. That kind of top-down enforcement could make a real difference if adopted more globally.”
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