There has been a story surfacing recently about a man who has been jailed for 7 years and ordered to pay nearly £1,000,000 for illegally streaming Premier League games. His sentence will be extended by a further 6 years if he doesn't pay back the million pounds owed within 3 months. I personally think that this is extremely wrong and unfair, and I will explain why below:

For many years now, sports broadcasters such as Sky Sports and BT Sports have taken sports off of free TV or just being watchable for free in general, and have slowly started locking them behind paywalls, and over the years, the price of these paywalls has slowly been creeping up. Now, there are many people across the UK (and the world) who cannot afford to pay for these services due to the sky high prices, and as a result, they cannot watch their favourite sports anymore. Some people just don't want to pay the high prices (even if they can afford it), and again, they are essentially locked out of their favourite sports. Yet when they try to watch these events by streaming them via the Internet, they are met with fines or jail time, simply for wanting to watch a sporting event. It is absolutely unfair and ridiculous, and it is time to put a stop to this.

This is a call to the government and to all major sports broadcasters of the UK to STOP punishing people for streaming sporting events for free (such as streaming them online), and to force these companies charging for the sports to permanently lower their prices for their services, and cap them at low prices. People should not have to miss out on their favourite sports or a particular big sporting event just because they can't afford/don't want to pay for the high prices. This isn't just about football either, this is about all sports. We will not stop until people have access to free sports again!