On Fight Day, it only takes a few seconds typing into a search engine to find a bevy of links proclaiming to stream the fight for free. What’s more – some of them actually work. The recent Pacquiao vs. Broner megafight was the latest victim of this stream sniping, but there was no news from either camp or the fight producer about having lost a substantial amount of money.
One has to wonder, however: If fans can watch live boxing streaming for free, how long can the legitimate pay per view industry survive? Eventually, people will find the stream sniping links that work, and they will use them and tell friends about them. Once the technology is sound, taking down any individual stream sniper will not stop the show. Digital infrastructures can be proliferated with ease. Copycats will pop up with every new fight, and savvy snipers will have mirror streams on deck to go live as soon as the first stream is found and stopped.
Most importantly for bettors, will this new free streaming affect oddsmaking on fights? The short answer is definitely yes.
The way that money moves into and away from a fight affects the way that oddsmakers move the odds on a fight. This is true even if there is no new information about the fighters before the fight. No market maker wants to be out of line with the other market makers -this is the fastest way to lose money in the business. Instead of taking on this risk, oddsmakers will simply provide less opportunities to bettors. This lengthens the market and provides less stability for the betting pool.
Legitimate streaming companies are finding ways to keep their audiences, however. In the present generation of stream sniping, there is always a noticeable drop in the quality of the audio and visuals. This is because the sniping is done from outside the venue. In the physical location of big boxing events, security is very tight. They are actually quite good at keeping the node of a stream snipe outside of the building.
This means that the true vulnerability for the producers of the event is the core stream itself. Because the stream is digital and its data stream is not even in the same realm as the physical event, it can be taken more easily. If it is taken once, it can be taken multiple times.
Oddsmakers are beginning to distinguish between production companies with high security for their data streams. You can definitely see it in the oddsmaking. If you are dealing with a fight that seems to have long odds or overly uncertain odds based on the competition present, you are likely dealing with the uncertainty of stream sniping taking money from the event. The good part for the industry is that the risk is already baked in. The bad news is that it is happening more often. Look for other big fights to have more uncertain odds not because of the fighters themselves, but because of the lesser technology surrounding the event itself.