Amazon’s Fire Stick enables ‘industrial scale’ piracy’, report warns

More than half of people in the UK watching pirated content on a physical device use Amazon devices

The Amazon Fire TV Stick can be modified to give free access to streaming services and live sports (The Independent )

Amazon’s Fire Stick streaming device is enabling piracy on an “industrial scale”, according to a new report.

Research by Enders Analysis found that more than 50 per cent of people in the UK who have watched pirated material on a physical device in 2025 used an Amazon product.

The Amazon Fire Stick, which plugs into TVs to give access to platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime, can be modified to deliver illegal live streams of sporting events like Premier League matches.

According to the report, this trend is costing “billions of dollars in piracy” through lost broadcaster revenues.

Other big tech firms, including Google and Meta, were accused in the report of “ambivalence and inertia” for allowing the problem to continue.

“Big tech is both friend and foe in solving the piracy problem,” the report’s authors noted.

“Conflicting incentives harm consumer safety by providing easy discovery of illegal pirated services, and reduced friction through low-cost hardware such as the Amazon Fire Stick.”

Amazon said in a statement that it was “vigilant in our efforts to combat piracy” and that it has made changes to Fire Sticks to deter people from streaming illegal content.

"Pirated content violates our policies regarding intellectual property rights, and compromises the security and privacy of our customers," an Amazon spokesperson said.

Recent figures have shown digital piracy to be on the rise across the UK and Europe, with financial hardships and increasingly costly and fractured streaming space cited as factors for the resurgence.

It has resulted in a renewed crackdown against online piracy, with digital rights holders teaming up with law enforcement to catch those responsible.

Last year, two men were imprisoned for selling reconfigured Amazon Fire Sticks, which were loaded with a bypass to watch sport and movie streaming services for free.

“These cases highlight the importance of protecting legitimate providers, as well as the significant impact that coordinated law enforcement efforts can have on combating digital piracy,” Kieron Sharp, CEO of the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), told The Independent at the time.

“The message is very clear: if you sell a device that provides access to content that is not licensed to you or owned by you, you could face criminal investigation, prosecution and conviction.”