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Sports video operators & rights owners can unlock $28 billion in new revenue by combating piracy
New Delhi: Amid the growing threat posed by streaming pirates, a new research conducted by Synamedia has found that service providers and rights holders of sports events can unlock up to $28.3 billion in new revenue each year by putting some anti-piracy measures into place.
The UK-based video software provider company undertook the survey in ten markets – Brazil, Egypt, Germany, India, Italy, Jordan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the UK and the US in March 2020 in partnership with data and analytics firm Ampere Analysis. Over 6,000 sports fans aged 18-64 years who were part of the survey were pre-filtered and chosen based on their experience of watching sports on TV.
The online quantitative study used a new model to evaluate how different illegal viewers respond to anti-piracy measures. According to the report, 74 per cent of sports fans are willing to switch from illegal streams if a legitimate alternative is available and if the illegal streams become unreliable. Majority of these fans are younger and are often families with young children. They are avid sports viewers with many watching 10 or more different sports using connected devices.
At least 40 per cent of the converter cohort say they would subscribe to OTT streaming sports services, including single-sport services run by rights owners, with the balance opting for traditional pay-TV services, particularly those that offer exclusive sports rights. In fact, 57 per cent of the converter cohort already pay for legitimate services and 52 per cent pay for pirate services, as per the study.
However, converting pirate customers to legitimate ones require service providers to address the triggers that encourage consumers to seek out illegal services in the first place, said the study. Some of these measures could be a flexible access without complex installations or long contracts, ease of use, and availability on every device in any location, coupled with a price point that is often much lower than a traditional pay-TV service with premium sports tiers included.
“After years of growth, a recent downturn in rights fees has been exacerbated by the pandemic, hitting sports rights hard. But just as the value of rights is being eroded, there is now the prospect of creating new revenues by converting illegal viewers into paid subscribers,” said Synamedia senior vice president of security Yael Fainaro.
While previous attempts to value the revenue leakage from sports streaming piracy took a crude approach, Fainaro said the software provider company now has the detail to develop targeted approaches and the tools to deliver quantifiable results, ensuring every investment hits the jackpot.
The report – Pricing piracy: the value of action, uses a detailed model that takes into account all the complexities and nuances of sports piracy viewing. It identifies the demographics and characteristics of those illegal users who are most likely to convert to legal services, including their reaction when illegal viewing is disrupted.
As service providers address the triggers that lead consumers to seek out illegal services, the report can help them in transforming piracy from a cost centre into a revenue opportunity with measurable RoI. The findings can also enable service providers to target interventions – such as disrupting streams and incentives – at those viewers most likely to switch to legitimate services: the ‘converter cohort’, said the company, which has an experience of over three decades in video security.
SEOUL: In the eternal battle between gamers demanding lightning-fast refresh rates and professionals craving pixel-perfect clarity, LG Display reckons it has found détente. The South Korean display titan is unveiling the world’s first 27-inch 4K OLED monitor panel that marries an RGB stripe structure with a blistering 240Hz refresh rate—a combination previously thought incompatible, like oil and water or fashion and function.
The breakthrough lies in how the pixels are arranged. RGB stripe structure lines up red, green and blue subpixels in neat rows, banishing the colour bleeding and fringing that plague lesser screens when you park your nose close to the display. It is the difference between reading crisp text and squinting at a rainbow-tinged mess. OLED panels using this method existed before, but they topped out at a sluggish 60Hz—fine for spreadsheets, useless for fragging opponents in first-person shooters.
LG Display’s engineering wizardry changes the game. By cranking the refresh rate to 240Hz whilst maintaining that pristine RGB stripe layout, the company has produced a panel that works equally well for colour-critical design work and twitchy gaming sessions. Better still, the panel incorporates Dynamic Frequency & Resolution technology, letting users toggle between ultra-high-definition at 240Hz and full-HD at a frankly ludicrous 480Hz. That is fast enough to make your eyeballs sweat.
The specs are suitably impressive: 160 pixels per inch for exceptional detail, optimised performance for Windows and font-rendering engines, and colour accuracy that should please the Photoshop brigade. LG Display achieved this by boosting the aperture ratio—the percentage of each pixel that actually emits light—and applying what it coyly describes as “various new technologies.” Translation: years of R&D and probably some sleepless nights.
Existing high-end gaming OLED monitors have relied on RGWB structures (which add a white subpixel) or triangular RGB arrangements. Both work, but neither delivers the sharpness that professionals demand. LG Display’s new stripe pattern is tailored specifically for monitor use, a recognition that staring at a screen from two feet away demands different engineering than watching telly from across the room.
The company is betting big on this technology, targeting the high-end monitor market where it already commands roughly 30 per cent of global OLED panel production. Among gaming OLED panels in mass production, LG Display claims world-leading specs across refresh rate, response time and resolution—a trifecta that sounds like marketing bluster until you check the numbers.
“Technology is the foundation of leadership in the rapidly growing OLED monitor market,” says LG Display head of the large display business unit Lee Hyun-woo. He promises to keep pushing “differentiated technologies compared to competitors”—corporate-speak for staying ahead of Chinese rivals snapping at LG’s heels.
The new panel will debut at CES 2026 in Las Vegas, where LG Display plans to woo customers and expand its lineup. Initial rollout targets high-end gaming and professional monitors, the sweet spot where people actually pay premiums for superior screens rather than settling for whatever came with their laptop.
Whether this technology reshapes the monitor market or remains a niche luxury depends on two things: pricing and production scale. But for now, LG Display has pulled off something rare—a genuine technical leap that solves a real problem. Gamers get their speed, designers get their clarity, and LG gets bragging rights. In the cutthroat world of display tech, that counts as a win.
