A postman has been sentenced to three years in prison for operating an illegal IPTV service that sold pirated Premier League streams and modified Fire Sticks to nearly 2,000 customers. Michael David Barrow, 48, from Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, ran the service ‘MB Streams’ over a five-year period, amassing more than £200,000 in profits.
Although the exact financial impact is difficult to quantify, prosecutors estimated that broadcasters including Sky Sports, TNT Sports, and BT Sport suffered losses of approximately £6 million as a result of his activities. At Swansea Crown Court on Monday, the judge described Barrow’s actions as ‘large-scale commercial fraud’ driven by ‘pure greed’, noting that he had been aware of the likely sentence he would face if caught.
Barrow encouraged his customers to disguise the nature of their payments—made via PayPal or direct bank transfers—by referring to them as purchases for classic or retro football kits. Despite being visited by police in 2021 following a report to CrimeStoppers and issued with a cease-and-desist notice, Barrow continued his operation. He took additional precautions, such as requiring customers to communicate via the encrypted messaging app Telegram and only accepting new clients on the recommendation of existing customers to avoid, in his words, being ‘infiltrated by Sky agents’.
His Facebook account was also suspended for violating intellectual property rules. Ari Alibhai, prosecuting on behalf of the Premier League, told the court that Barrow supplied over 1,800 customers with apps and modified Fire Sticks at about £120 per year—a fraction of the cost of legitimate subscriptions. Barrow had previously pleaded guilty to three offences of making and supplying articles for use in fraud. He had no prior convictions.
In mitigation, barrister Megan Williams said Barrow expressed genuine remorse and that what began in 2019 as a ‘misguided wish’ to help friends and family ‘snowballed’ into a much larger enterprise. However, Judge Paul Thomas noted that Barrow had a steady income from his postal service job and that his motivation was ‘pure greed’.
Barrow was sentenced to 38 months in prison, of which he will serve 40 per cent in custody before being released on licence. This case is the latest in a series of high-profile prosecutions as broadcasters crack down on the surge in pirated content. Research published in 2023 by the Intellectual Property Office found that nearly four million people in the UK had illegally streamed live sport in the previous year.
In a similar case last year, a man from Halifax was jailed for two years after cheating legitimate providers out of more than £108,000 over an 18-month period. The Amazon Fire Stick, a legal device in its original form, can be easily modified to access pirated content. Media analysts at Enders, via the Financial Times, have described the scale of illegal streaming as comparable to ‘industrial’ theft, with a single high-profile event such as a live football match drawing ‘tens of thousands’ of viewers away from legitimate streams. Fans argue that this trend is driven by the sharp rise in monthly subscription fees; in the 2023-24 season, watching all televised Premier League matches required subscriptions totalling around £870 per year.
