DAZN partners with Videocites to combat piracy

DAZN Group and Videocites have teamed up to strengthen DAZN’s ability to combat intellectual property (IP) theft and illegal social media streams of its live sports content. “By swiftly removing pirated streams from social media platforms, we disrupt the viewing experience, which in turn demotivates consumers from accessing them in the future and encourages them to seek a legitimate service," Sandeep Tiku, CTO at DAZN Group, said.

The collaboration was formed as a result of Dazn and Videocites' mutual intentions to reduce online piracy and promote legit live sports streaming services. The company raised concerns about the facilitated way and speed with which videos can shared online, leading to a spike in illegal streams of live sports content, which has been noted in recent years."Ultimately, this will deter intellectual property theft and maintain a fair and sustainable digital environment, safeguarding the interests of broadcasters, rights owners, and athletes. The potential upside is remarkable," Tiku said.

Videocites’ solution uses AI-driven video recognition algorithms, allowing the swift identification of unauthorised streams amidst various amounts of user-generated content on social media platforms, even when the video has been manipulated or distorted as part of the pirates’ efforts to circumvent defence mechanisms. Using this live, Videocites technology enables DAZN to remove 98% of the thousands of pirated streams detected on social media within minutes.

Videocites’ technology serves prominent clients, such as the NBA, major leagues, Hollywood studios and various OTT platforms. “Personal streaming has significantly increased the scale of social piracy, which is no match to the current manual solutions,” added Videocites co-founder & CEO Eyal Arad. “Videocites uses its Video-AI capabilities to combat the rising tide of social piracy with scalable, immediate, and resilient detection and enforcement. We are proud to have a valuable contribution to a leading innovative streaming platform like Dazn and support their global growth.”