Brazil World Cup live streams are most illegally watched online, according to piracy experts

Football fans watch Fifa 2018 games through free pirate websites in record numbers

Brazil take on Belgium in the second quarter final of the Fifa 2018 World Cup, in what could be the most illegally live streamed match of the tournament so far.

More than 10 per cent of all illegal streams of World Cup group games were for matches involving Brazil, according to new figures from piracy prevention firm Irdeto.

The company detected 5,088 unique pirate streams of World Cup group games, with 582 of them for Brazil's three games against Switzerland, Costa Rica and Serbia.

Despite England games being broadcast on BBC iPlayer and the ITV website in the UK, 523 illegal streams were also detected by Irdeto for England's group games.

Morocco was the team with the second highest number of illegal live streaming links appearing online (561), with Portugal following close behind in third (535).

The majority of live stream feeds were shared through social media and video-sharing platforms like Facebook, Twitch and YouTube, despite these companies cracking down on them.

“As one of the biggest sporting events around, the World Cup inevitably attracts a lot of global attention from pirates, as well as legitimate viewers," said Rory O'Connor, senior vice president of cyber security services at Irdeto.

"Content owners, rights holders and platform owners must continue to work together and enlist technology and proactive services to take down illegal streams in real-time as we progress further through the tournament."

(AFP/Getty Images (AFP/Getty Images)

Mr O'Connor also reinforced other warnings made by cyber security experts about the dangers of illegal online streaming.

“Illegal streaming sites are illegal by nature and are riddled with malicious software," Joep Gommers, CEO at security firm EclecticIQ, recently told The Independent.

"The machines of users visiting those sites are mostly attacked in the form of drive-by-downloads, which means that malware is downloaded when visiting a website, completely without the user’s knowledge."

Fifa, football's international governing body, has issued a statement about the illegal streaming of its content.

"Fifa takes infringements of its intellectual property very seriously and is exploring all options to stop the infringement of its rights, including in relation to action against legitimate organisations that are seen to support such illegal activities," it said.