What Happened To The Streameast App? Here's Why It's Offline

The world's premier streamer of pirated sporting events, Streameast, has been shut down after a year-long sting operation that saw Europol, the U.S. Department of Justice, and Egyptian law enforcement collaborate with some of the world's largest media companies. According to a September 3, 2025, report by The Athletic, the investigation was spearheaded by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), an anti-piracy coalition between 50 of the world's largest entertainment conglomerates, including Amazon, Sony Pictures, Walt Disney Studios, Apple, and Netflix. The organization has been at the forefront of shutting down illegal streaming services since its founding in 2017, orchestrating takedowns of popular pirate sites like RareBreed, Jetflicks, Beast IPTV, and Zoro.to. 

Streameast purportedly used 80 domains to generate 1.6 billion visits in 2024, broadcasting everything from European soccer to the NFL, NBA, MLB, boxing, and F1. The operation is a major win for the sports and entertainment ecosystem of broadcasters, leagues, and teams that depend on media rights deals to generate revenue.

The skyrocketing popularity of illicit streams and the complexity of the networks orchestrating them have made piracy a difficult problem for law enforcement. In addition to pirated streams, unlicensed subscription platforms like TheTVapp.to have also begun to pose a serious problem for broadcasters. Workarounds like bootlegged IPTV Sticks and jailbroken Amazon Fire Sticks have also become an area of concern for regulators. But as ACE's chairman Charles Rivkin told The Athletic, "With this landmark action, we have put more points on the board for sports leagues, entertainment companies, and fans worldwide."

The investigation, which began in July 2024, came to a head on August 24, 2025, when Egyptian authorities arrested two men in El-Sheikh Zaid, a suburb of Cairo. Both men, who have yet to be publicly identified, are accused of copyright infringement. In addition to the arrests, authorities confiscated three laptops and four smartphones suspected of being used to run the illegal sites. Authorities also seized cash, Visa cards containing over $120,000, and roughly $200,000 in crypto wallets, according to ACE. Officials also uncovered multiple real estate holdings allegedly purchased by the scheme, as well as a shell corporation in the UAE used to launder roughly $6.2 million in revenue. As with most free illegal streaming sites, Streameast's revenue came from advertising. According to ACE, all Streameast domains will now redirect users to its "Watch Legally" website.

The operation wasn't the first targeting the service, as U.S. Homeland Security Investigations had taken down several Streameast domains in August 2024. Streameast admins quickly responded, however, restarting operations and claiming that it had 400 additional domains from which to broadcast games. As of early September, posters on Reddit (via The Athletic) claim that backup domains are still running, while Heavy Sports asserted that 16 domains continued to operate, streaming at least two MLB games. ACE, for its part, told The Athletic that it was aware of these sites and is working to confirm whether they are successors to Streameast or merely copycats trying to take advantage of the situation.

Illegal broadcasts have been a persistent problem since hackers began ripping off cable TV transmissions in the 1980s. Since then, the practice has become widespread, with the European Union's Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) finding that visits to illegal sports streams rose by 30% in 2022 alone. According to a 2021 report by anti-piracy vendor Synamedia, illegal streams cost sports broadcasters $28.3 billion annually, and these losses can have a knock-on effect on media rights deals themselves. 

In February 2025, sports broadcaster DAZN found itself in a contract dispute with Ligue 1, France's premier soccer league, over its inability to prevent digital piracy. The problem hits pay-per-view events like boxing even harder. For example, reports from the time indicated that the infamous Tyson Fury vs. Deontay Wilder heavyweight match in 2019 attracted nearly six times more illegal streams than paid ones.

In many ways, Streameast was emblematic of these issues. Averaging 136 million monthly visits, the service garnered a global audience, particularly in the U.S., U.K., Canada, the Philippines, and Germany. Rising broadcast costs, improved stream quality, and widespread cultural acceptance have made pirate sites more popular, especially among young viewers. According to the EUIPO, over a quarter of EU citizens between the ages of 24 and 15 admitted to illegally streaming sports, and regulators are likely to continue cracking down on illegal streamers. As Larissa Knapp, executive vice president and chief content protection officer of Motion Picture Association, stated in an ACE press release, the dismantling of Streameast is "further proof that no piracy network is beyond the reach of coordinated global enforcement."