Last month’s UEFA Champions League final between Arsenal and PSG saw Luis Enrique’s side lift the trophy following a penalty shoot-out. Despite not being available on free-to-air channels – which drew the ire of fans, commentators, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer – the season-ending event still drew some 7m UK viewers.

The decision to restrict the final to TNT Sport and HBO Max left the 2026 final some way short of the record (12m) and raised questions about the number of viewers who illegally streamed it. Data from YouGov Surveys may provide some answers.

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Our research shows that, while most Britons who did watch the final did so via an official stream (79%), one in nine (11%) Britons who watched the final admitted they did so via unofficial feeds.

However, the Champions League final is a big-ticket event, and not necessarily representative of British sports piracy in a broader sense. So, we also asked about illegal streaming habits in general. YouGov data shows that 7% of the public said they had watched an unofficial broadcast in the past six months. Of this group, 37% watched on a firestick/IPTV device, 36% on a website with an illegal sports stream, 17% watched at a pub, bar, or coffee shop, and 16% via a VPN combined with a foreign subscription service. Some 15% also streamed sports games on a social media platform. Of the sports streamed, football was the most popular by some distance (75%), followed by boxing (17%) and tennis (6%). 

YouGov polled 2,014 British adults online on 8-9 June 2026. The survey was carried out through YouGov Surveys: Self-serve. Data is weighted by age, gender, education level, region, and social grade. The margin of error is 2% for the overall sample.

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