Amazon is blocking illegal Fire Stick sports streaming

Folks streaming sports illegally on their Amazon Fire Sticks could be in for a rude awakening. The tech giant aims to crack down on folks using Fire Sticks for that purpose.

The Athletic, which is a part of the New York Times, reported on the news as a part of a podcast on illegal streaming. The Athletic worked with YouGov Sport and found that approximately 4.7 million adults watched illegal streams in the UK alone, and that Fire Sticks were a common tool in that endeavor. Previous versions of the Fire Stick employed open developer software, meaning users could side-load illegal streaming platforms and play those streams on their television.

Amazon told The Athletic that its latest version of the Fire Stick will crack down on piracy via a new operating system and an inability to load apps not in Amazon's store.

Why is this a big deal? Because sports streaming involves big, big money. In an era where our attention is as divided as ever, sports remain the closest thing we have to monoculture. Take the NFL in the U.S., for instance. Of the top 10 most-watched broadcasts last year, every single one was an NFL game. And NFL games accounted for 32 of the top 50.

So, as we covered in depth at Mashable, broadcasters trip over themselves to pay billions of dollars to buy a piece of the NFL's broadcast offerings. It's so bifurcated that it'd cost a user at least $810.86 to watch every single game. Illegal streams, at least in theory, would devalue that very expensive product. But now accessing those illegal streams just got more difficult.