About 3 million people watched Mayweather vs. McGregor on pirated streams
Floyd Mayweather's victory over Conor McGregor pulled in an estimated $700 million. It also lost out on millions more.
Almost 3 million people watched 239 illegal streams of the fight Saturday night, according to software security company Irdeto.
Irderto found 165 streams on social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Periscope, and Twitch. The company also identified 67 on streaming websites.
Instead of paying up $99.95 to watch the fight at home on Showtime or paying $20 to watch at a bar, nearly 3 million people got to see it from their smartphones, laptop, or smart TVs for free.
Here's one example of a pirated video on Instagram Live with 129,000 people watching:
Facebook and other social networks did remove pirated streams throughout the night.
“We devote significant resources to address copyright issues for live content on Facebook. Video publishers and media companies can provide reference streams of live content that are checked against files in our Rights Manager tool," a Facebook spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement ahead of the match.
Twitter made it impossible to discover pirated streams by searching for "Mayweather" and "McGregor" on the app.
This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.
Showtime and its partners like Facebook "successfully blocked and removed the highest number of unauthorized streams for any event in the company’s history," a Showtime spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.
"We did this through cooperative efforts with our distribution partners and social media platforms during the live event, as well as with proactive court action blocking third party websites that offered illegal live streams," the statement reads.
Meanwhile, Showtime was hit with a class-action lawsuit from customers due to streaming issues the night of the fight. Attorney Michael Fuller wrote that Showtime knowingly served "untested, underpowered service" and "misrepresented the quality" of the feeds.
Showtime said it will issue a full refund to any customer who was unable to receive the stream, as long as they purchased the event directly from the pay-per-view channel.
This post was updated with a statement from Showtime.
Kerry Flynn is a business reporter for Mashable covering the tech industry. She previously reported on social media companies, mobile apps and startups for International Business Times. She has also written for The Huffington Post, Forbes and Money magazine. Kerry studied environmental science and economics at Harvard College, where she led The Harvard Crimson's metro news and design teams and played mellophone in the Band. When not listening to startup pitches, she runs half-marathons, plays with puppies and pretends to like craft beer.
