After a year long on-going investigation, first reported on Sept 3 2025, the world’s largest piracy sports streaming organization was raided in a sting operation. A website with once over 80 associated domains across the world, and a peak activity, reaching up to 136 million visits on monthly average. Steameast provided free access to almost all major global sport fixtures.
Reported by The Athletic, with a straight source from the ACE (Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment); which includes over 50 media and entertainment organizations. The ACE is led by major companies like Amazon, Apple TV, Netflix and others.
The arrests happened near Cairo, Egypt; where ACE were closely aided by Egyptian law enforcement that arrested two men on suspicion of copyright infringement. They seized laptops and smartphones allegedly involved with operating the websites.
ACE collaborator and DAZN sports group COO, Ed McCarthy boastful stated “Dismantling Streameast is a major victory for everyone who invests in and relies on the live sports ecosystem… This criminal operation was siphoning value from sports at every level and putting fans across the world at risk.”
While Steameast’s original domain is no longer active, many online posts are directing people to back up and copy cat websites that are currently still active.
In what seems as an never ending cycle, Ben Woods, an entertainment analyst at Media Research, stated the site’s shut-down may be a short win for global broadcasters, but ultimately, would fail to stop the “game of whack-a-mole.” Referring to the ACE continuous hunt for, relatively, an infinite amount of global live sports piracy domains.
The current high costs for sport streaming, is one of the major causes for the typical sports fan to search for alternatives to view their games. Watching sports legally, became among a “cocktail of forces” continuing to fuel illegal streams; “Only by exploring ways to make live sport more accessible will this issue become less of a problem for major sports leagues” said Woods.
Soccer piracy for example, has skyrocketed over the last two decades, according to CNN. Many major leagues sell their matches at a high price to pay-per-view, streaming services or even to multiple broadcasters, requiring fans to pay for multiple subscriptions to watch their games during the season.
For the NFL this 2025-26 season, one must pay for a Peacock subscription to watch prime-time Sunday Night Football; ESPN+ to watch Monday Night Football; Amazon Prime for Thursday Night Football and select games have already been announced to stream on Netflix.
Major entertainment groups believe the clear way to stop piraters is to form a collation, prepare sting operations and execute raids to shutdown global sites; where in reality, they’re aware of a solution that would make their streaming more financially available to the viewing public.
