As of: March 27, 2024, 7:04 p.m
By: Florian Neuroth
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To save money, some football fans share streaming accounts.
The providers now want to stop this.
Customers are threatened with an “additional subscription fee”.
Unterföhring – Football fans are used to grief.
Not just because the favored team can't always win.
If you want to follow your favorite players on the screen, you now need several subscriptions to providers such as Sky, DAZN or Amazon Prime Video.
Subscription prices have been raised repeatedly in recent years.
DAZN in particular has repeatedly made significant price jumps since its launch in 2016;
most recently in summer 2023.
Some football fans therefore resort to a simple trick: they simply share the costs and subscription, even though this is not permitted in the vast majority of tariffs - and is becoming increasingly difficult.
According to a report in
Bild
, the providers Sky and DAZN are now taking action and tightening the rules.
Account sharing: According to the report, Sky writes to customers and threatens with an “additional subscription fee”
The newspaper quotes the company from Unterföhring near Munich as saying that they have been writing to customers for some time now who use Sky access outside of their household.
Customers would be asked to check the device list and remove any devices not used in the household.
Otherwise, “the use of your Sky subscription in accordance with the terms and conditions” is no longer guaranteed, Sky says.
Anyone who streams football and shares the account with several people will have bad luck in the future.
The providers are now taking stronger action against so-called account sharing.
© MIS/IMAGO
In fact, under point 1.4.1 of Sky's general terms and conditions there is a note that use is limited to the household specified in the contract, "unless otherwise agreed or permitted by law".
According to the terms and conditions, this also applies if customers are allowed to watch the program on other TV receivers using a TV app.
Anyone who violates this will likely face expensive consequences.
If the subscription is not used compliantly, the company reserves the right to “make further use dependent on the payment of an additional subscription fee of 15 euros per month,” Bild quotes a Sky spokeswoman as saying.
According to her, customers should have enough time to adapt the use of the device to the terms and conditions.
Even with DAZN, only streams on one device at the same time
A similar change recently occurred at competitor DAZN.
This no longer allows its new customers, even with the most expensive subscription, to play streams in parallel on two devices.
Apparently DAZN didn't announce this publicly and the football fans were angry.
As heise.de wrote at the time, the two simultaneous streams were previously a unique selling point in the annual subscription to the DAZN Unlimited tariff.
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The terms of use on the DAZN page state under point 9.3: “You are entitled to stream content via the DAZN service on a maximum of one (1) device at the same time.” Depending on the membership model, the permitted number could be higher.
“You are then entitled to stream content on as many devices as were communicated to you during the registration process or otherwise before completing the membership, but not beyond the agreed number,” clarifies DAZN.
This means: Anyone who once agreed that they could play several streams at the same time is still entitled to do so now.
Only new customers look into the tube.
However, if the regulation is extended to existing customers in the future, this could lead to many terminations at DAZN.
Streaming providers are taking stricter action against account sharing
Providers are losing income through account sharing and are now taking stricter action against it.
The US company Netflix has been asking collective accounts to pay since 2023, and Disney Plus will no longer be able to share accounts with other users outside of your own household from the end of March.
DAZN had already reacted in March 2022.
At that time, hundreds of thousands of accounts were reset worldwide that were suspected of being used contrary to the terms and conditions.
Customers were logged out of all devices and had to reset their passwords.
It is unclear how the providers want to prevent account sharing.
If you don't want to give up streaming and are looking for legal ways to get as much as possible for your money, you still have a few options - legal and budget-friendly.
(Florian Neuroth)