Triller Fight Club has filed a lawsuit citing alleged $100 million in damages in California, against illegal streamers of their April 17. Jake Paul vs. Ben Askren event from the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Atlanta, Georgia.
In an official statement emailed to MMA Fighting, the promotion alleged that eleven illegal streamers broadcasted the event, which was headlined by a professional boxing match between polarizing YouTuber, Jake Paul, and UFC alum, one-time Bellator and ONE Championship welterweight best, Ben Askren. Yahoo! Sports was first to report the news of the promotion’s filed lawsuit.
The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the city of California has cited damages against eleven total websites, one hundred unnamed persons with two million total illegal streams. The damages cited are $100 million, in which Triller claim was revenue lost.
“It’s shocking to think a theft so grand can be done so blatantly and brazenly and steal with no remorse,” the statement provided to MMA Fighting read. “There is zero difference between what they did and walking into a market, stealing tones of a product and selling it at a discount in the parking lot. It’s neither civilly nor criminally any different and we are prosecuting to the fullest extent of the law.“
“There were far over two million illegal streams, akin to hundreds of millions of dollars. Sites, mostly using Google’s YouTube such as FILMDAILY.COM, ACCESSTVPRO.CO, enONLINE2LIVESTREAM.US, CRACKSTREAMSLIVE.COM, SPORTS-TODAY.CLUB, MY-SPORTS.CLUB, BILASPORT.COM, TRENDY CLIPS, MIKE, YOUR EXTRA, ECLIPT GAMING, ITSLILBRANDON, and others are causing significant damage not just to (Triller) Fight Club but content creators overall.“
“People put a lot of hard work, time and money into creating a product for the consumer and having it stolen and resold is terribly damaging,” the statement continues. “The good nes is they are not protected by VPN masking or other firewalls as their activites are criminal and grand theft so we will ultimately find them and prevail not just for us but content creators in general. We intend on working closely with the authorities as well to stop this highly illegal behaviour.“
Scoring an opening round knockout win over Askren, Paul improved to 3-0 as a professional boxer, and following the event claimed that the pay-per-view spectacle sold 1.6 million buys total, generating $75 million.