Asian-facing gambling operator 6686.com, the sleeve sponsor of Wolverhampton Wanderers and official betting partner of Wolfsburg, Lazio and AS Monaco, is illegally streaming live games from the Premier League, the Bundesliga, Serie A, Ligue 1 and a number of other competitions on its Chinese language website.
By Philippe Auclair
Do you want to watch the best that European club football has to offer for free? This is easy. All it takes is to switch on a VPN (Virtual Private Network), choose Hong Kong as a location and head for 6686.com. Three clicks later, it's all there.
On the right of the screen, a blue "play" button icon indicates which games can be watched live on the bookmaker's website. It is almost all of them. The pictures originate from legitimate broadcasters such as Telemundo, Setanta, Arena Sport and others, but also directly, it seems, from the raw international video feeds which the Premier League, the Bundesliga and other European leagues provide to their rights-holders, and which must have been captured straight from the satellites beaming the precious video content to legal broadcasters.
This would explain the startling quality and clarity of the picture, a world away from the shaky illegal streams which many frustrated or impoverished sports fans share online. There is hardly any buffering. When there is, the 6686.com logo spins for just a few seconds before the image stabilises and offers the kind of viewing comfort which could be expected...