Pro Sports Has a Piracy Problem

Piracy poses a growing challenge to all sorts of digital media and entertainment companies, but it’s particularly acute for companies that own the rights to sports broadcasts, because efforts to shut down pirated broadcasts often take longer than the broadcasts actually last. New research suggests, however, that there are effective ways to discourage the use of pirated broadcasts and boost payment for legal ones.

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  Brett Danaher is an associate professor of economics and management science at Chapman University. He is the co-founder and organizer of the Entertainment Analytics Conference, which annually brings together the top academic and industry data scientists focused on the entertainment ecosystem.

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  Michael D. Smith is the J. Erik Jonsson professor of information technology and marketing at Carnegie Mellon’s Heinz College and Tepper School of Business.
  

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  Rahul Telang is Trustee Professor of Information Systems at the Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University. His research focus is information security and the digital-media industry.