Two of the most prominent pirated streaming sites, MethStreams and the most recent iteration of CrackStrea,ms were taken offline on Monday. This marks the latest instance of unlawful streaming services going dark in response to a coordinated effort by leagues, media companies, regulators, and law enforcement.
Last month, ESPN NFL insider Adam Schefter shared a Thursday Night Football game clip from the unlawful streaming site MethStreams, which garnered some mainstream attention. A source informed Front Office Sports that the film, which featured a MethSteams watermark, was extracted from an alternative Twitter account and that Schefter was not viewing the Amazon game on MethStreams.
On Monday, Schefter responded to the news of MethStreams’ demise with a neutral face emoji in jest.
It is unclear as to why the pirating sites have gone silent. However, the Motion Picture Association-backed Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment assisted in dismantling one of the world’s largest live sports piracy organizations earlier this month.
In a press release, the organization announced that it had successfully requested that the administrators of a Vietnam-based ring, responsible for 812 million visits in 2024, transfer dozens of domains to ACE.
CrackStreams’ previous domain was among the 138 domains forcibly removed.
𝗕𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚: Popular sport streaming sites Methstreams and Crackstreams have been taken down and are no longer in use.
Millions of sports fans will be impacted by this. pic.twitter.com/oRmQ3Vl0VH
— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) December 30, 2024
Motion Picture Association executive Larissa Knapp announced the downing of the Vietnam-based sites, stating, “ACE’s live sports members face a unique threat when it comes to digital piracy, as live sports broadcasts lose substantial commercial value once the game ends.”
The takedown “serves as a warning to piracy operators worldwide, including those involved in live sports piracy, that ACE will identify and terminate their illegal operations.”
Faster Illegal Streaming Takedowns
In a joint letter to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office last year, the NFL, NBA, and UFC stated that illegal broadcasts were causing the global sports industry to lose “up to $28 billion in additional potential annual revenue.”
When illicit streams emerged in the early 2000s, pay-per-view events were the primary targets. However, the emergence of pirated sites worldwide was largely due to the increased cord-cutting in recent years and the availability of sports content on streaming services such as ESPN+, Peacock, and other paid services.
In addition, they developed an illegal bundle that allows subscribers to access thousands of entertainment channels and live sports content for a nominal monthly charge through pirated paid websites.
Although end users in the United States violate the law by viewing illicit streams, investigators and prosecutors prioritize the individuals responsible for those streams.
In June, a federal jury in Las Vegas convicted five men of operating a paid piracy streaming site. In November, federal prosecutors in New York indicted two brothers for allegedly earning over $7 million operating 247TVStream, another paid pirate service.
February is the targeted date for the sentencing of the Las Vegas case.
It is not immediately apparent whether ACE was involved in the shutdown of MethStreams and CrackStreams, so contacting ACE was not an immediate process.
ACE’s Dec. 19 termination announcement included crackstreams.dev as one of the sites. On the same day, the individual reported on Discord that another CrackStreams domain had been “locked down by our domain provider.” This individual is purportedly responsible for MethStreams and CrackStreams.
CrackStreams identified itself as a “free live sports streaming website” that provided users with stolen sports streaming content.
The site’s domain was altered to crackstreams.in, as is frequently the case with piracy sites. On Monday, the same Discord user named “methstreams” announced they were “taking a break from live streaming.” Methstreams did not respond to a Discord direct message.
Tucows, the world’s second-largest domain registrar, registered methstreams.com and crackstreams.in. A representative from Tucows informed FOS that the company had not taken any action against either domain.
