Top Rank, the co-promoter of Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight last weekend, has indicated it may pursue legal action against individuals who streamed the fight on social media sites and the companies that provided the technology to do it.
"We'll have to pursue any people who are allowing people to distribute something that is behind a proprietary wall," Top Rank president Todd DuBoef told the Los Angeles Times. "We'll have to challenge those technology companies that are facilitating it and we're going to have to take a legal position against them."
The Mayweather-Pacquiao fight was priced at nearly $100 on pay-per-view. An unknown number of people worldwide streamed the fight for free on apps such as Periscope and Meerkat. According to Mashable, one Periscope stream had 10,000 viewers on it at its high-water mark.
Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo tweeted after the fight that his company was the "winner" on Saturday night (along with Mayweather, who took a 12-round decision). Twitter owns Periscope.
Periscope co-founder and CEO Kayvon Beykpour sent out a tweet after the fight, saying: "Piracy does not excite us." He said that his company respects intellectual property rights and had people looking to "be responsive" during the fight.
Periscope was launched in February 2014 and was sold to Twitter in March 2015. It allows people to live stream video from their smart phones to anyone who wants to watch it. Viewers can comment, ask questions, and "heart" the video (the equivalent of a "like" on Facebook).
Prior to the fight, HBO and Showtime, which managed the pay-per-view, took legal action against two websites that had promised to live stream the fight.