There's actually a cottage industry that's popped up selling discount PPVs. They sell a low-quality internet stream for $5 or so. From an economic perspective, it's an interesting phenomenon. You can see the demand that fails to clear at the market price.<p>For a sport still struggling for a cultural foothold, the aggressive anti-piracy actions of the UFC may eventually do it more harm than good. The pay per views are an expensive product, and the free cable shows aren't available in as many homes as the internet. In the long run the promotion would almost certainly benefit from being more open with their footage, especially that of older fights, until Georges St. Pierre is as popular a name as Lebron James.
Watching UFC over streaming sucks big time, but I've done it as paying ~$50 when its just me watching is just too much.<p>I wonder what kinda revenues they'd make if they did their own low quality streaming for say $10 - this way, if you have friends over, you'll opt for the $50 HD version, but for a single person, $10 is reasonable.<p>I'd bet there's a huge segment of the market they are missing out on.
Even though I understand that the UFC wants to protect their revenues I'm disappointed by their actions. I don't watch UFC streams but I do watch soccer streams when my favorite teams in The Netherlands. I do this because I live in the United States and watching an illegal stream is the only way possible for me to watch those games. If this is the beginning of the end for illegal sports streams than a lot of people living abroad are going to be hurt by it.
The people watching those streams were probably not going to pay to watch it anyways. They didn't lost much profit.<p>If anything they probably gained more viewers who might pay to see the next event.