Tyrone GAA is winning the war against organised crime gangs who have illegally intercepted live streams of its championship matches.
A number of pirate operations have been shut down due to a combination of criminal prosecutions and enhanced computer software.
A dramatic drop in revenue from its streaming service has been reversed, and Tyrone GAA TV is flourishing once again.
The county’s IT Officer Gerard Bradley confirmed that subscriptions to coverage of the renowned Tyrone Championship have recovered to healthy levels once again, following a huge drop-off last year.
“The live stream of this year’s championship attracted a very substantial increase in subscribers,” he said in his annual report.
“The increase was due to range of factors including the deployment of software technologies and identification of the accounts used by the IPTV pirates.
“Tyrone GAA has to strike a delicate balance between a highly secure service for genuine subscribers that requires a level of IT expertise to access the live stream and a service that is open to piracy.
“Making the pirate services unreliable did lead to many of those with ‘dodgy firesticks’ not being willing to take a risk with an unreliable illegal service for subsequent fixtures.
“The civil authorities have recently successfully prosecuted a number of pirates, including high profiles cases north and south of the border.”
And Bradley warned: “Anyone subscribing to these illegal pirate services are putting their credit card and banking details in the hands of criminals.”
Every championship game, in all three grades, Senior, Intermediate and Junior, is broadcast live by Tyrone GAA TV in what has proven to be a hugely popular service, with some of the county’s best known GAA figures providing expert analysis alongside popular commentators.
“Our live stream continues to set the highest standards for quality and production, this is due to two main factors. MacAV, a local company delivers excellent video production with ongoing innovation,” said Bradley.
“In conjunction with our commentators and analysts, Mac AV provide a very professional service that matches and consistently exceeds anything provided by other broadcasters.”
Meanwhile, the Tyrone GAA website is on course to hit the three million mark in hits this year.
“The website continues to see an exceptionally large viewing audience and by the time this report is published it is likely to have exceeded three million views in this calendar year,” said the IT chief.
“The website continues to be the most popular online platform for Tyrone GAA, dominated by viewers looking at club fixtures and results. While not on the same scale as Fixtures and Results, there are also significant numbers using the website for reference material and club information.
The website peaked for views on the biggest championship Sunday of the year in September of this year, when it attracted 48,243 visitors.