Watching sports illegally just got harder

Geocomply, a Vancouver-based unicorn company that detects location fraud and helps verify users’ true digital identities, has inked a standout deal with sports streaming leader DAZN.

Sports are a regular target for illegal streamers. Given games’ distribution across multiple channels as well as location-based blackouts, internet users use VPNs, Tors, proxies, and other advanced location spoofing techniques to try and get around restrictions.

Using GeoComply’s GeoGuard product, DAZN hopes to detect those who are illicitly watching a game. GeoGuard, the company says, catches 98 percent of all anonymous IPs with its advanced rules engine, low false-positive rate, and hourly updates. Doing so will help reduce fraud, piracy, and raise the bar for compliance.

“GeoGuard is the solution of choice when protecting your content,” said James Clark, general manager of media and entertainment at GeoComply. “Whether protecting access to premium sports content or popular shows or movies, GeoGuard can be trusted to block fraudsters and stop bad actors. We are excited that DAZN will now be leveraging the value of our industry leading solutions, starting with GeoGuard.”

The deal adds a big client to the company’s roster. DAZN is the leading global sports streaming and entertainment platform, with over 20 million premium paying subscribers across 200 markets. The company is using GeoComply’s tech to backstop the geo-blocking required to maintain its price differentiation across various locations, and reduce the risk of fraudulent streaming.

“DAZN takes fraud prevention very seriously,” said Sandeep Tiku, CTO at the company. “We’re constantly on the lookout for the best tools to protect our business, especially since we stream the most prominent sporting events yearly to tens of millions of people worldwide. GeoGuard far exceeded our expectations during our recent tool evaluation testing. We are now delighted to be working with GeoComply as a new partner.”

Geocomply is no stranger to the sports market. It began developing its tech for the highly regulated U.S. online gaming and sports betting industry, and has subsequently branched into geolocation fraud detection solutions for streaming video broadcasters and the online banking, payments, and cryptocurrency industries.

In May, the company inked a deal with unicorn sports gaming company Underdog, becoming its “exclusive geolocation provider” across North America. It also counts Akamai, Amazon Prime Video, BBC, BetMGM, DraftKings, FanDuel, and Sightline among its customers.