Count what it takes to watch every competitive match played by a single club in a major European league. Domestic league rights are usually split between two or three broadcasters. Domestic cup competitions are often separate. Continental competition is another rights holder, sometimes two. Pre-season and friendlies frequently sit on the club's own platform.
Four or five subscriptions, and even then there are matches you can't legally watch in some territories because of blackout rules. The total annual cost runs into the hundreds.
Meanwhile there are free illegal streams available within seconds of a search. The industry's response has been enforcement. That seems like a misdiagnosis.
How the fragmentation happened
It wasn't accidental. Rights holders discovered that selling exclusive packages to multiple buyers generates more revenue than selling everything to one.
Competition authorities in several jurisdictions also pushed in this direction, requiring that rights be split into multiple packages specifically to prevent a single broadcaster from monopolising coverage. The intention was consumer benefit through competition. The effect was that consumers now need multiple subscriptions.
Add the arrival of streaming platforms with deep pockets bidding for individual packages, plus leagues launching their own direct services, and you get the current situation, where the number of places football lives has multiplied while the amount of football has stayed roughly constant.
The consumer arithmetic
From a viewer's perspective the calculation is stark.
Legal route: multiple subscriptions, several apps, different interfaces, different login credentials, remembering which service has which match, and a total cost that can exceed a season ticket in some cases.
Illegal route: one search, one click, free, all matches, including the ones that aren't broadcast in your territory at all.
The quality gap used to be the main deterrent — illegal streams were low resolution, unreliable, and covered in pop-ups. That gap has narrowed considerably. Many illegal streams are now high definition and reasonably stable.
When the illegal product is more convenient, more comprehensive and free, enforcement is fighting a losing battle against a product problem.
The blackout issue
A particular category of self-harm. In several markets, certain matches cannot legally be watched live within the home territory, for historical reasons relating to protecting attendance at lower-league fixtures.
The policy dates from an era when television and stadium attendance were genuine substitutes. Whether that still holds is debatable, and the evidence is contested.
What's not debatable is the effect on piracy. A match that has no legal viewing option in a territory generates demand that can only be met illegally. And once a viewer has found and used an illegal stream for a blackout match, the friction of using it again for a legally available match is essentially zero.
Blackouts don't just fail to prevent viewing. They actively train audiences in piracy.
What enforcement achieves
Rights holders have invested heavily in anti-piracy — automated detection, ISP blocking orders, targeting the hosting infrastructure, legal action against operators.
This has some effect. Blocking orders do reduce casual access, and taking down major operators disrupts supply temporarily.
The limitation is that supply reconstitutes quickly and the demand is undiminished. It's a containment strategy with recurring costs and no endpoint.
There's also a measurement issue in how success gets reported. "Streams blocked" is a count of activity, not an outcome. What matters is whether people who would have pirated instead subscribed, and that's much harder to establish.
The version that would work
The obvious answer is a single comprehensive product at a reasonable price, and the obvious objection is that it would generate less revenue than the fragmented model.
That objection is probably correct in the short term and I'm not sure it's correct over a longer horizon, for two reasons.
First, fragmentation suppresses total consumption. Fans who would watch six matches a week watch two, because they only subscribe to one service. That reduces engagement with the sport, which eventually reduces what the rights are worth.
Second, a generation that grew up on comprehensive streaming for music and television has an expectation about how media works, and football's model is conspicuously out of step. Habits formed young are durable, and the habit currently being formed is that football is something you find on a dodgy website.
The middle options
Full consolidation isn't happening, but there are intermediate steps that seem underused.
Aggregation — a single interface that surfaces content from multiple rights holders with unified billing. This exists in some markets and works reasonably well.
Single-match purchases at sensible prices, for viewers who want one game rather than a season subscription. Attempted occasionally, usually priced too high to be attractive.
Club-level packages, letting a supporter follow one team across all competitions for a single fee. Complicated to arrange across rights holders, and probably the thing supporters most want.
None of these are technically difficult. They're commercially awkward, which is a different obstacle and one the industry has shown limited appetite for clearing.