Mayweather, McGregor most pirated event in history

Up to 100 million people illegally viewed Floyd Mayweathera��s 10th round knockout of UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor on Saturday, potentially making a�?The Money Fighta�? the most pirated event in history.

Pay-per-view numbers will come in later this week or early next week. UFC president Dana White said he is optimistic it will break the record sales number of 4.6 million set in 2015 by the Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao bout.

Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe was likewise enthusiastic.

a�?Wea��re extremely excited by the preliminary information that wea��ve received thus far and ita��s tracking really well,a�? Ellerbe said. a�?Wea��re feeling good about everything and we believe we did a fantastic number.a�?

But regardless of how big the number may be, ita��s going to be dwarfed by the number of pirated views of the event. Wayne Lonstein, the CEO of VFT Solutions, said early numbers indicate there were up to 100 million viewers of illegal streams.

VFT provides content protection, IP litigation and cybersecurity and technology services to clients. Lonstein said what he calls a�?nano-piracya�? is costing companies and artists, athletes and others who sell content significant amounts of money.

a�?Nano-piracy is using or taking either live or recorded proprietary content and capturing it using a connected device, like a phone, a tablet or a computer, and then using a live stream app such as Facebook Live, YouTube Live, Periscope and a number of other ones, to stream either peer-to-peer, one-to-one, or peer to millions,a�? Lonstein said.

The bout, which had a suggested retail price of $89,95 and then an additional $10 for high definition, was freely available all over Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

Irdeto, a digital platform security company, discovered 239 streams that reached 2 930 598 viewers.

It provided Yahoo Sports with two screen shots of the fight being streamed on Facebook Live. One showed 472 000 viewers watching a pirated stream, while the other had 234 000 viewers.

Just the viewership from those two streams alone could cost the event more than $70.6 million. a�� Yahoo