Premier League taps Friend MTS for security

The English Premier League is tapping digital watermarking specialist Friend MTS to help secure its pay TV licensees’ OTT and TV Everywhere streams internationally.

Using its global internet monitoring system and network forensics capability, Friend MTS will identify where security weaknesses are being exploited, and the Premier League notified.

Kevin Plumb, Head of Legal Services for The Premier League, said, “Protecting the distribution of our live games across all video platforms is paramount to us and our broadcast partners. By working with Friend MTS we will be able to identify any platform leaks, thereby ensuring that they can be fixed quickly.”
Friend MTS’ CEO Jonathan Friend said, “The Premier League is always innovating and evolving in its approach to piracy, and our new partnership will enhance this further by identifying real-world exploits of platform security vulnerabilities.  By making it harder for licensed services to become sources for piracy, and preventing cascading cases of ‘pirates pirating pirates’, this degrades the quality of illegitimate services and reduces the economic threat to rights holders.”