THURSDAY, March 28, 2024
nationthailand

Why buying fake products is cheating the club you love

Why buying fake products is cheating the club you love

Many sports fans think that buying a counterfeit jersey of their favourite team or watching games through illegal streaming sites is a harmless practice. After all, most of the time, nobody will ever know.

But, if fans want to truly support their heroes, there are ample reasons why they should stick with genuine products and official streams.

Speaking at World Intellectual Property (IP) Day 2019 in Bangkok, the La Liga Delegate for Thailand, Jose Maria Gotor, spelled out why buying genuine products benefits not only the teams ­­but the fans themselves.

Gotor noted that the revenue from TV companies and official merchandise suppliers is critical to pay for clubs’ recruitment programmes, training facilities, support staff and other services that keep them competitive.

Philipp Dupuis, Head of Economics and Trade Section, EU Delegation to Thailand said IP (intellectual property) rights were crucial for the sports sector, which has to rely on the protection of its IP assets - these are linked to the name, and sports associations, TV rights, merchandise and the internet.

Why do the clubs need IP protection? It’s an economic asset. It’s a name they build. They need the revenue from sales of merchandise to finance recruitment, training facilities, sports staff and new initiatives.

Without these assets and the revenue that comes with them, without fans buying the legal merchandise and without fans watching games via legal streaming channels, the fans are harming, not serving, their club. If they support their club, buying licensed merchandise and watching licensed TV, they contribute, and basically the show, the game goes on. This is at the heart of what we’re looking at.

Moreover, the TV rights for top-level sports are typically licensed to broadcasters who then offer the highest-quality streams to fans worldwide.

Everyone loses when fans opt to dodge legal streams, Gotor added.

“When La Liga fans watch pirated matches online, they are essentially endangering the Spanish football teams that they love,” he said.

“There are plenty of legitimate ways to catch a live La Liga match in Southeast Asia, especially on the BeIN Sports app or through your local cable TV provider.”

La Liga is the premier division for men’s football in Spain and its highest-profile teams such as Real Madrid and Barcelona FC have massive fan bases in Asia.

 

nationthailand