It has become something of a cultural icon in Ireland: the so-called dodgy box.
They might not resemble a box any more, but thousands of homes have one attached to their livingroom television. The devices enable users to watch nearly any channel or streaming platform for a tiny fraction of the cost of a legitimate subscription.
Some estimates reckon one in five Irish homes are using them. If that is indeed the case, then tens of millions of euro worth in content is being watched illegally on them.
The most common way of accessing all this for a knock-down price is to plug in a modified, or “jail-broken”, device such as an Amazon fire-stick into a USB socket.
RM Block
The big television and broadband providers are cracking down, however. This is no surprise, as their latest subscription numbers make for grim reading.
A ComReg survey of 3,000 people recently revealed that paid-TV subscriptions for the likes of Sky Ireland and Virgin Media have dropped sharply over the past four years.
At the outset of the cost-of-living crisis in 2022, 70 per cent reported having a traditional subscription. This year that same number has dropped to 57 per cent. Those with a subscription to a streaming service remained steady at 67 per cent.
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The dodgy boxes were identified as the main culprits.
Efforts to tackle this severe slippage began in earnest in 2024.
Following an investigation by Sky Ireland’s “anti-piracy’” unit, Ciaran Donovan, a married father of four from Ashfield in Kildare town, pleaded guilty to three charges relating to running an illegal TV streaming service.
Donovan operated King Kong Media and charged customers for codes to access pay TV channels such as Sky Sports and BT Sports. He pleaded guilty to possession of €900,000, which had gone through accounts linked to King Kong.
He received a prison sentence of 16 months.
The same investigations team has been back in the public eye over the past few weeks.
Sky Ireland recently took action against the man who ran the copyright infringing IPTV is Easy streaming service. The company was last week granted a court order requiring Revolut Bank UAB to share the details of 304 subscribers and resellers.
Dodgy box operator David Dunbar, of Manor Crescent, Roxborough, Co Wexford, was last year fined €30,000. Sky was awarded €480,000 in damages and legal costs thought to run to €100,000 against the operator. Dunbar’s running of the service came to light after a simple tip-off.
Sky disputed his account of how much he had earned over the course of operating IPTV, noting he had made more than 180,000 bets through an online account between August 2022 and May 2025. The total stakes placed ran to more than €1.4 million, on which he had made a small profit.
Sky’s investigator has claimed that at least five of the resellers are continuing to operate the IPTV service, and it is eager to have them shut down before the end of the Premier League season.
This is an unprecedented move and one that may make potential users of such services think twice about signing up in the future.
Sky has conceded it would be difficult to take legal action against all those named, but the messaging is clear.
For many, the “dodgy box” is a no-brainer. Subscriptions to numerous streaming services and TV providers can run to thousands of euro per year, particularly when sports packages are added.
A subscription to IPTV is Easy is estimated to have cost between €80 and €100 for the year. An additional charge of about €150 would typically also be charged to cover a virtual private network.
There is little stigma attached to having one, and users will question why anyone in their right mind would hand over such big sums to the legitimate providers.
The counter argument runs that, while Premier League clubs might well be able to afford the lost revenue by way of reduced TV rights deals, many smaller sporting organisations cannot.
For example, LOITV, the FAI streaming service for domestic football, said earlier this year it was losing €1 million in potential revenue from the widespread piracy. Its director Mark Scanlon said it estimated that about half of people watching the games were doing so illegally.
He cited a survey carried out by the Between the Stripes podcast. Out of 1,300 respondents, 47 per cent admitted to watching League of Ireland games without a legitimate subscription.
However, the court order won by Sky Ireland obliging Revolut to hand over account details is seen as the most critical breakthrough in its battle with the dodgy box distributors.
Prior to this, a source close to the case said, there had been “no paper trail” when it came to identifying the end users.
A precedent has now been set that could identify many more dodgy boxes and sticks. Following the trail of electronic transactions could potentially see a return to cash-in-hand payments, which would make operating a large subscriber base more difficult.
Those identified by their account details will be hearing from the broadcaster.
It is expected that legal letters will start to be issued to those named by Revolut at some point over the next five weeks.
The letters are likely to be “cease and desist”, informing recipients there is strong evidence to suggest they are using an illegal device.
The people contacted will also likely be asked to fill out a form confirming they will no longer use illegal streaming services.
The temptation for some could be to take their chances and throw the letter in the bin. But sources within the TV industry suggest further legal steps could follow.
The bigger emphasis will be on the resellers.
Legal action has already been initiated against two of them, and this will likely extend to another 10 when their accounts are identified. The case taken against Dunbar will likely provide a template for these 12 resellers and further details of users could still be unearthed.
While this is all unprecedented, industry insiders acknowledge the scope of the problem they face is so vast there will be no quick fix. One of the big issues for the TV companies is the ease with which people can get in on the piracy business.
The technology is easily cobbled together, and subscribers garnered through local word of mouth. The case against Dunbar revealed that, while there is technically no limit to the jurisdiction in which a streaming pirate can operate, most of his primary customers were close to his Wexford base.
“Most of them were neighbours,” said the source with close knowledge of the case.
This seems to be typical of many pirate operations.
Instead of having to scour the darker ends of the internet for a connection, users can be easily put in touch with a provider by way of a recommendation on a WhatsApp group or local social-media page.
The sheer number of people signed up to these illegal services means very few are going to worry about being seen as some sort of social pariah.
As it goes after this crop of 304 dodgy-box users, Sky Ireland is simultaneously attempting to bolster its position within the market.
Earlier this month it revamped its TV and streaming offerings and it has done a number of deals with the streaming giants.
It would appear that the aim, in part, is to replicate the simplicity and “one-stop shop” offering of the dodgy boxes and fire-sticks.
The race is on between it and other providers to become the ultimate aggregator of content, combining the likes of Disney+ and Netflix with more traditional TV sports and entertainment.
Industry sources stressed that these innovations were not a direct response to the rise in illegal viewing, but acknowledged that they were designed to play a role in retaining subscribers.
While these companies may now feel they have new avenues of legal action open to them, an economic downturn could well make the problem more pervasive.
A further hit to consumers’ pockets over the coming months would increase the allure of the dodgy box and make the premium products appear all the more costly.
