And more importantly, what’s so wrong with having a dodgy box, if you’re never going to be arrested let alone prosecuted, and if broadcasters and the authorities don’t even know the extent of the problem?

The Pitch, through the help of a number of industry insiders and available analysis, will attempt to put a number on just how expensive the issue for broadcasters, and to evaluate how much the black market is affecting rights buyers.

Firstly, it’s important to say that the real numbers are unknown – Sky Ireland doesn’t know the scale of the problem, except that it is causing them huge damage through lost subscriptions and advertising revenues.

Then there is overall value of those lost customers, the hundreds of thousands of dodgy box and Firestick owners who get their sports for a fraction of the actual cost – as little as €12 per month.

What we do know is that the last recorded numbers for those who own a dodgy box, or illegal streaming device, stood at 171,000 according to a 2019 EU report into illegal internet protocol television (IPTV).

This four-year-old data cannot accurately reflect the real numbers of today, given they are pre-Covid and given viewing habits and needs rapidly evolved during lockdown, forming and shaping the must-have interests of today.

You’re likely to get a more accurate reflection on the cost and size of the problem if you consider the number of Irish people who now pay Sky Ireland for their service.

According to the company’s latest financial report (for 2022) there are 700,000 subscribers who pay Sky Ireland. Yet a number of industry sources believe that the numbers who receive unlimited subscription packages through illegal technologies “is likely to be the same at least, or even greater”.

Let’s assume, conservatively, that this number is around one third of overall subscriptions, or let’s round down to 200,000 people who consume sports by illegal means.

If we examine the financials, Sky Ireland reported revenues of €610m for 2022, which also includes internet bundle packages.

For our model, we’ll assume that of the more than €600m earned by Sky, calculated against the broadcaster’s 700k Irish subscribers – yes, we are deliberately leaving out ad revenue and other income streams – then that figure works out at €857 per person in subscriptions annually.

To offer a more accurate reflection, let’s look at my own subscriptions to Sky, which includes two Sky Cube boxes and all available sports, movies and other Sky and TNT packages.

For this service, I pay €169 per month (versus the average dodgy box subscription of €12), which works out at just north of €2,000 per year – a dark secret I’ve kept from my wife for many years.

If we go somewhere in between the two values - €857 and €2,028 – and then round down, to say, an average annual Sky package of €1,000 per year, we get close to achieving a value of how much the dodgy box sector might be worth.

As noted, industry sources believe there may be as many dodgy boxes and sticks out there as Sky boxes, but let’s use the only actual numbers we have available – that probably outdated 2019 IPTV EU figure of 171,000.

Then assuming there are 171,000 illegal streamers of sports rights, multiplied by an average fee of €1,000, you come up with an overall total of €171m in lost subscriptions to Sky Ireland annually.

We did try to get more information on what these values are, but the reality is there is no expert body in Ireland which focuses exclusively on the issue of broadcast and copyright piracy.

There is a UK agency, FACT – the Federation Against Copyright Theft – which last month highlighted the problem in Ireland, but without any great data or detail.

So apart from the ‘mere’ €171m in losses to Sky Ireland, what’s the harm in having a dodgy box?

Well, a little bit like news brand subscriptions and other paid-for services, there is the moral question about taking content which has cost a lot of money and jobs to produce.

Then there is the quality and lack of high definition, the glitch-prone streams and the always nagging feeling that you’re doing someone out of a living.

Certainly the industry accepts that sports piracy is a virtually impossible segment to police, where what goes on in the home stays behind closed doors, and where the issue is normalised.

A quick ‘dodgy box’ search on the web throws up a raft of Amazon and Google-backed services available to buy and install, thereby lessening the seriousness of the problem in the eyes of the consumer.

Then there is the lack of jeopardy about getting caught, though there have been penalties for those providing illegal streaming services.

Earlier this year Paul O’Brien of Tallaght was given community service after he was convicted on three sample counts of copyright infringements involving the possession and sale of so-called “protection-defeating devices”.

Judge Martin Nolan at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court described the crime as “a sneaky type of offence” and “classic white collar criminal behaviour” after the court had heard how O’Brien sold Android boxes to 150 customers and then charged them €12 a month for the service.

He purchased the boxes on alibaba.com.

Broadcasters are hoping that a soon-to-be-renegotiated suite of rights for Premier League and other EFL games will bring more matches into people’s homes, ridding the need to use streaming platforms for matches which are not featured on UK and Irish TV.

But the reality is these games are already available on Twitter, and every big fight is ready to watch on social media in an instant, so the issue for Sky and others is not the dodgy box, it’s more down to the consumer and the price they’re willing to pay before going a dodgy route.

The most watched sporting event in recent history 

IT’S hard to overstate the sheer numbers who tuned into Ireland’s epic Rugby World Cup clash with South Africa last Saturday night.

Indeed, you got a sense from the game on RTÉ that the whole country was watching, which in this case was about a third correct.

More people watched Ireland’s win on television than any other sporting event over the past three years, with almost a quarter of a million viewers more than watched second on our list – this year’s All-Ireland football final.

The key World Cup group game was a perfect storm for RTÉ, given the size of the encounter and its positioning right in the heart of prime time, Saturday night viewing.

The match also reinforced rugby’s position as the nation’s favourite sport amongst television viewers, or at least an Ireland team playing heavyweight opposition at a Rugby World Cup as a fan’s favourite.

However, in a breakdown of the top 10 most watched sports events of the past three years, Rugby features three times, Gaelic football three times and soccer three times, with Limerick’s 2022 All Ireland the sole representative from hurling.

Interestingly, out of the three soccer matches which were the highest viewed, none featured an Ireland team, and two featured England.

The good news for rugby and for broadcasters Virgin Media and RTÉ, is that these numbers could well be the start of more incredible figures in the weeks ahead, as Ireland hurtle towards the knockout phase of the competition.

MOST WATCHED LIVE SPORTS EVENTS SINCE 2021 

Ireland v South Africa, RWC 2023 – 1.2m 

Dublin v Kerry, All Ireland Final 2023 – 971k 

Tyrone v Mayo - All Ireland Football Final 2021 – 944k 

Italy v England, Euro 2020 Final, 2021 – 941k 

England v Denmark, Euro 2020 Semi-final 2021 - 888k 

Kerry v Galway – All Ireland Football Final 2022 – 872k 

France v Ireland – Six Nations 2022 – 818k (VM1) 

Ireland v France 2021 – 798k (VM1) 

Kilkenny v Limerick - All Ireland Hurling Final 2022 - 786k 

Argentina v Croatia – World Cup 2022 - 784k