For the opening World Cup game on June 12, Brazil vs Croatia, 332 illegal streaming links, out of which 220 were unique streams, "were detected," according to Colin Mann of ADVANCED TELEVISION. On the piracy front, despite high availability of FTA channels, "many illegal streaming links have concurrently been identified on several Internet web sites, also known as link farms." In fact, as the match was available on FTA channels, "it was even easier for pirates, as well as for regular viewers, to share the content." These figures "are slightly higher than the matches of major European Leagues." On the audience side, "the findings are in line with expectations." As a result of the high number of legal FTA broadcasts, Viaccess-Orca detected an illegal audience of 496,529 viewers for the opening match, "which is lower than the volume of audiences traditionally encountered for such premium matches." More precisely, "the estimated unicast streaming viewers represented circa 360,933 viewers" and 73% of the total audience. Peer to peer measured audience by VO’s patented technology "was 135,596 unique viewers," representing 27% of the total audience (ADVANCED TELEVISION, 6/18).
