Amazon is cracking down on illegal streaming on its Fire TV Stick

Amazon says it is blocking apps that let users to illegally watercourse contented connected its Fire TV Stick, according to reporting by The Athletic. The clampdown volition use to caller and aged devices and it’s already begun successful France and Germany, with a planetary rollout acceptable for the adjacent weeks and months. 

The Fire TV Stick, and akin plug-in streaming devices made by different companies, person agelong been associated with pirated content, specifically sports. Unauthorized third-party apps tin beryllium “side-loaded” onto devices and connection users entree to amerciable streaming platforms astatine little prices than ineligible sports providers. 

But a device-level prohibition of piracy apps volition render useless hacks attempting to skirt location-specific bans with a VPN, Tech Radar reported. 

The determination to prohibition apps identified with piracy landed weeks aft Amazon launched the Fire TV Stick 4K Select, which runs connected Linux instead of the easily-modified Android bundle utilized connected erstwhile TV streaming hardware. The latest streaming stick, the institution told The Athletic, includes beefed up information measures and limits app downloads to lone apps successful the Amazon app store. 

The Athletic reported a connection from Amazon via an unnamed spokesperson: “Piracy is amerciable and we’ve ever worked to artifact it from our app store… We’ll present artifact apps identified arsenic providing entree to pirated content, including those downloaded from extracurricular our app store. This builds connected our ongoing efforts to enactment creators and support customers, arsenic piracy tin besides exposure users to malware, viruses and fraud.”

Roughly 9 percent of adults successful the UK person illegally streamed sports successful 2025, according to a six period survey that ended successful October. That’s astir 4.7 cardinal people, and is astir 200,000 radical much than the canvass conducted 2 years ago. The survey was conducted by marketplace probe institution YouGov Sport and commissioned by The Athletic.

Fire Sticks, the catchall word that includes Amazon streaming sticks, is the 2nd astir communal mode that UK adults devour pirated sports streams, according to the YouGov survey. Unauthorized websites ranked archetypal with 42 percent of respondents citing it arsenic the astir communal mode to ticker sports illegally, compared to 31 percent of respondents who ranked plug-in devices.