Execs from DAZN and Sky Sports have warned the sports media industry that it “faces a financial crisis unless it gets to grips with rampant online piracy,” according to Matt Slater of THE ATHLETIC. DAZN Global Head of Rights Tom Burrows at The Financial Times’ Business of Football Summit on Wednesday said that “piracy was a ‘huge problem’” for the streamer and, “therefore, a problem for everyone involved in professional sport.” Burrows: “Media-rights deals have been done on the basis of exclusivity but I think there’s almost an argument to say you can’t get exclusive rights anymore because piracy is so bad.” Slater notes DAZN is currently in dispute with Ligue 1 over the value of the five-year deal they struck last year, with the French league’s “response to the piracy crisis being one of the streaming platform’s main complaints.” The situation is “not believed to be as bad in the UK.” But Sky Group COO Nick Herm also said that “tackling piracy was a ‘never-ending battle.’” Herm suggested that piracy was costing the company “‘hundreds of millions of dollars’ of missing revenue.” Research firm Enders Analysis founder Claire Enders believes that one of the reasons the Premier League’s media rights “continue to grow in value is that the league, in partnership with its broadcast partners, police and Britain’s leading internet service providers, has been much tougher on piracy than its counterparts elsewhere” (THE ATHLETIC, 2/26).