By Aaron Rigby
Staff Writer
The world’s most infamous illegal sports streaming website was taken down on Wednesday, Sept. 3., following a successful sting operation. Egyptian law enforcement officials and the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment terminated the notorious illegal service following a year-long investigation, which led to a raid on the Streameast headquarters on Aug. 24, 2025, resulting in the arrest of two men in Egypt.
“Today, ACE scored a resounding victory in its fight to detect, deter, and dismantle criminal perpetrators of digital piracy: by taking down the largest illegal live sports platform anywhere,” said ACE Chairman Charles Rivkin. “With this landmark action, we have put more points on the board for sports leagues, entertainment companies, and fans worldwide - and our global alliance will stay on the field as long as it takes to identify and target the biggest piracy rings across the globe.”
Through 80 unauthorized domains, Streameast offered hundreds of millions of sports fans worldwide unauthorized access to live broadcasts of sporting events at no cost, although the events being streamed were typically locked behind a paywall.
Most notably streaming matches from Europe’s top soccer leagues, such as England’s Premier League, the illicit network also provided visitors with access to major American sports leagues such as the National Football League, the National Hockey League, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball.
Unlawfully broadcast pay-per-view boxing matches also played a major role in contributing to the website's ability to garner over 1.6 billion visits in the past year alone, making Streameast the largest illegal live sports streaming operation in the world, according to ACE.
According to Adam Leventhal of The Athletic, Egyptian Law Enforcement arrested two men suspected of copyright infringement, seized laptops and smartphones, which authorities suspected of operating the unlawful sites, and obtained cash and credit cards found at the site of the raid. The arrests took place in El-Sheikh Zayed in the Giza Governorate of Egypt.
According to Leventhal, the investigation unveiled links to a United Arab Emirates shell company, which was allegedly utilized to launder a total of $6.2 million in advertising revenue over the course of the past 15 years, dating all the way back to 2010. A shell company is identified as a company with no active business operations or significant assets, often used to hide money, avoid taxes, or commit fraud while simultaneously hiding the identity of the owner.
“This action swiftly dismantled what was once the largest illegal sports streaming operation in the world, and I applaud the Egyptian authorities for their partnership,” said Executive Vice President and Chief Content Protection Officer for the Motion Picture Association, Larissa Knapp. “It’s further proof that no piracy network is beyond the reach of coordinated global enforcement.”
The sting operation to take down the illegal streaming empire was put forth by ACE, the world’s leading antipiracy organization, powered by a global network of over 50 media and entertainment companies, with a goal of protecting the creativity and innovation that drive the growth of core copyright and entertainment industries.
The takedown comes amidst a growing outrage over the continuous growth in subscription-based viewing in the sports industry. Many fans have taken notice of the rise in costliness required to watch their favorite sports team play all season long due to the increasing number of streaming platforms sponsoring each sport. For example, if you want to watch a full season of New York Knicks basketball, you will have to purchase the team's NBA League Pass subscription, have access to ABC, ESPN, and NBC, and on top of that, you will need to purchase subscriptions to Amazon Prime Video and Peacock to watch games streaming exclusively on those platforms.
Though ACE successfully took down the king of sports pirates, there are still a multitude of other platforms they will need to conquer to make a large impact.
