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The Mayweather-McGregor Fight Shows It's Impossible to Stop Social Media Streaming of Big Events (vice.com) 88

Posted by msmash from the unstoppable dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Nearly 3 million viewers are estimated to have watched the fight this weekend via online streams, according to Irdeto, a digital security firm. Though many of these were slick, traditional streaming websites, there was also a new surge in social streams. Between Periscope, Instagram live, Facebook live, YouTube, Twitch, and smaller platforms like Kodi, Irdeto identified 239 streams of the fight over the weekend. And with the option to have private, share-with-just-your-friends streams (like private Facebook Live feeds), it's likely there are many more streams of the fight that were running than Irdeto wasn't able to track. Social media livestreaming has exploded in recent years, creating a whole new avenue for illegal sharing. In 2015, when Mayweather squared off against Manny Pacquiao in another much-anticipated fight, Periscope was only two months' old. Facebook and Instagram's live feed functions were still a year away. Now, they're as ubiquitous as the platforms that host them. Plus, with every smartphone now equipped with a high definition camera, most homes connected to high-speed internet, and the ease of streamable services on already-familiar social media sites, it's no wonder there was such a torrent of pirated feeds.
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The Mayweather-McGregor Fight Shows It's Impossible to Stop Social Media Streaming of Big Events More

The Mayweather-McGregor Fight Shows It's Impossible to Stop Social Media Streaming of Big Events

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  • Watched on Twitch (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    They took down a few streams but I had 6 queued up so no problem.

    Only an idiot would pay 100 bucks for a boxing match.

    • No one person pays $100 for a boxing match just like no one person watches a boxing match by himself. It's a party thing.

      • *cough*

        The only other viewer, at my house, was my dog. He was largely uninterested and the girlfriend was entirely uninterested. $100 isn't that much money. You should have seen my coke budget from a few years ago. Now that was a waste of money.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Anonymous Coward

      only an idiot watches 2 men beat each other up for money

  • 175 million to punch someone (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blahbooboo ( 839709 ) on Monday August 28, 2017 @04:18PM (#55099207)

    There is something disappointing that punching someone earns 2 people $175 million dollars. Shame we dont have as much enthusiasm for Nobel laureates as we do for sports and the oscars.

    • There is something disappointing that punching someone earns 2 people $175 million dollars. Shame we dont have as much enthusiasm for Nobel laureates as we do for sports and the oscars.

      It would probably end up like novel writing [youtube.com].

    • Re:175 million to punch someone (Score:4, Insightful)

      by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Monday August 28, 2017 @04:31PM (#55099303) Journal
      Two people punching each other has some entertainment value. I'm not sure what, but apparently plenty of people are willing to pay $100 to watch that. How much entertainment for these people is there to be had from science? Maybe a robot fight or a SpaceX launch. Nothing worth $100. Nothing to enthuse over by the water cooler the next day. It's not about what we value more, or about whom we should reward for a certain service, but about how much money the public will pay for watching you do your stuff. You do something, anything, that makes millions of people fork over $100 for a stream or god knows how much for a ringside seat, and you too can earn that kind of money. And I bet that even in an anti-idiocracy, people still wouldn't pay for live chess matches or quantum physics lecture battles.

      • Two people punching each other has some entertainment value. I'm not sure what, but apparently plenty of people are willing to pay $100 to watch that.

        It's a combination of things:
        - appealing your primitive emotions (watching members of the same species smashing each other is a strong enabler);
        - forbidding you from experiencing the same event personally, with the exceptions of some very specific places and people (aka "creating scarcity");
        - making this a rare enough event (aka "creating more scarcity")
        - making you believe you want to watch it (ads, commercials, more ads, more commercials)
        - peer pressure ("all my friends watch it, I should too, otherwise t

      • You have it backwards. It's the idea that this is interesting while other science or academic achievements are about as much fun to the normals as supergluing your junk to a cop car. beating the remaining brain cells from a half unconscious guy is totally awesome, and the reason we don't live in the 27th century technology already.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        "It's not about what we value more... but about how much money the public will pay for watching you do your stuff."

        Uh huh.

        • Paying to watch something for entertainment is not the same as valueing it. I value science more than many other things, and if the IRS let me pick what to spend a portion of my taxes on, I'd pick science. I'd pay a researcher to do his research... but I wouldn't necessarily pay to watch him do it, or even be interested enough to watch it for free.

    • Shame we dont have as much enthusiasm for Nobel laureates as we do for sports and the oscars.

      Well, people do pay large sums of money for the privilege of attending their classes, regurgitating what they said, and working with them. Yes, there's certification at the end of it, but the value of that degree comes in part from the reputation of said collection of intellectuals.

    • But some people do have more enthusiasm for Nobel Laureates. We call them nerds.

    • There is something disappointing that punching someone earns 2 people $175 million dollars. Shame we dont have as much enthusiasm for Nobel laureates as we do for sports and the oscars.

      You get two Nobel laureates in the ring for a no-holds-barred punch-up, and I'm sure you'll find lots of people willing to pay to watch :D.

      Yaz

    • Nobel prizes aren't really set up for spectators. Like the 2016 physics award went to three people for "theoretical discoveries of topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter". Without context, it sounds impressive, but has little meaning. Furthermore the work was done decades ago, even if it was meaningful it's probably for something that I've taken for granted most of my life and that also makes it hard to get excited about. Like your parents telling you how great they are for givin
    • Nobel prizes? Much, much harder to understand.
    • It's more than that though, these are athletes at the peak of physical fitness and training challenging each other. I think there's something to be said for that.

    • It's not so bad. It's a proper sporting event, even if it's a weird novelty match. Yes, it's a violent contact sport, but I have no issue with that.

      I'm not disheartened to see it receive so much attention. It's a good deal better than the vacuous garbage they normally print in the tabloids, or show on crapholes like msn.com.

  • Kodi is not a streaming platform (Score:5, Informative)

    by hackel ( 10452 ) on Monday August 28, 2017 @04:19PM (#55099209) Journal

    Why must reporters be so completely incompetent? Kodi is a media player. It is not a "social streaming service" by any stretch of the imagination. It is best compared to a *web browser*. Are people blaming Chrome and Firefox for online streaming? I don't think they are. Do some fucking research!

  • Charge$100 for the PPV and this is what you get. Charge 10x for a business to do so and they won't pay. Instead of licensing it to a sports channel, allowing them to charge other channels around the world to view it. Take in the advertising dollars, nope PPV $100 for a lackluster fight with a pathetic ending.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      This. I'm a huge boxing fan, and even used every penny of what I had saved to that point in my life to see Muhammad Ali's last fight in Nassau. I still refused to pay the large price to see this fight. I waited to see the highlights on the news. Boxing is killing itself by excluding casual fans. It's the casual fans that become hard-core fans. Everyone in the country talked about Ali and later Tyson. Their fights were national events that became a part of the American culture. Now, only the few hard

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Also, I thought it was already included if one subscribes to Showtime on cable TV too when I checked on CATurday evening/night. Lame!

  • > it's no wonder there was such a torrent of pirated feeds.

    'pun intended' ? mmm, couldn't resist.... how appropriate.
    • No, this is a "Motherboard" (Vice) reporter. They are humorless and very unfunny. The fact that you even suggest they made a pun is somehow sexist and insensitive. WTF is wrong with you? I hope you are proud of yourself.

  • Why would you want to? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by H3lldr0p ( 40304 ) on Monday August 28, 2017 @04:27PM (#55099275) Homepage

    That's what these events are. They are a place for the wealthy, the well to do, and the well connected to show off. This is conspicuous consumption writ large. If you are the person putting this boxing match together, you want people to show up and show that they're present because that's how you get people to go the next time.

    Used to be you'd have to have the camera swing over the stands and maybe send a few people with a mic down to interview a few choice people who agreed to ahead of time. Now? Now, they do it all for you. Maybe you have to send a few official invites out, maybe comp a few tickets but otherwise, social media doing all of this is the stuff of dreams for promoters.

    The only people who hate the steaming are those who haven't figured out a way to profit off of it yet.

  • Also that non muilt-cast streming sucks (Score:3)

    by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Monday August 28, 2017 @04:44PM (#55099393)

    Also that non multi-cast streaming sucks.

  • Once again the topic of piracy and an article's implied reasoning that each illegal stream took directly away from revenue. It's been discussed for well over a decade now, and I'm still convinced that true fans and people who can pay for some form of entertainment do so, even considering illegal alternatives.

    Likewise, those with merely a passing interest in a form of entertainment and only participate in that form of entertainment if they can do so free, would not pay ever, even if there were no other way

  • illegal sharing my ass (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    How is that any different than having a few friends to sit in front of a screen?

    • How is that any different than having a few friends to sit in front of a screen?

      I thought that too was illegal now...

  • and at least 1 billion did not watched the fight and maybe 0.25 million knew about the fight only because it was streamed.

    Although it's not sourced, they should know the publicity of the fight is pretty limited to their region (USA). If not for the streaming network, a lot of people wouldn't even know they exist.

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