Triller Fight Club won a judgment against individuals and entities accused of stealing, re-distributing and profiting illegally from pay-per-view signals. Judge R. Gary Klausner granted Triller Fight Club’s motion for default judgment against Matthew P. Space and Eclipt Gaming, for violations of the Federal Communictions Act, copyright infringement and vicarious copyright infringment.
In April, Triller Fight Club had filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, Central District of California, against 12 websites and 100 unnamed individuals alleging that they stole the signal for the April 17 Jake Paul vs. Ben Askren pay-per-view and sold it at a lower rate than the $49.99 price tag. Triller alleged that the websites and streamers cost the fight promotion in excess of $100 million. One of these sites was Eclipt Gaming.
The June complaint alleged that the streams distributed by Eclipt Gaming were watched by more than 70,000 viewers, thereby representing a loss of about $3.5 million in lost income.
Fight Club launched on November 28, 2020, shaking up the sports and entertainment world as Boxing Legends Mike Tyson and Roy Jones, Jr. battled in Los Angeles, CA, on a Pay-Per-View broadcast that garnered 1,600,000 PPV buys. To celebrate its first anniversary in 2021, Fight Club introduced Triad Combat, a revolutionary event featuring boxers vs. MMA fighters and paired with the globally recognized heavy metal supergroup, Metallica.
Read the full TrillerNet press release (Nov. 30, 2021)
Why it matters
“We are pleased with the outcome and hopeful it will set a precedent for us and all content creators going forward that stealing is not going to be tolerated,” said Ryan Kavanaugh, TrillerNet’s co-founder.
“These bad actors caused significant damage not just to Fight Club but content creators overall. Our events are our product. We invest substantial sums of money into these events just as a car company would or a computer company would. If someone broke into a Tesla dealer and stole 10 cars it wouldn’t even be a question, the law would punish them. Our losses from these bad actors pirating and profiting off of our events are even greater than those examples,” said Mr. Kavanaugh.
It’s a high stakes game: Triller Fight Club has sold over 3,000,000 Pay-Per-Views in the past year, according to a prepared statement; making it one of the top-selling combat sports/entertainment platforms. The widely acclaimed monthly Trillerverz series, including world-class professional boxing and great VERZUZ battles, has consistently been at the top of the most-watched broadcasts averaging over 5,000,000 views. The Trillerverz events have been the most-engaged sporting events of the year, exceeding even the UFC’s viewership on each of its events.
