Tom Brady may be glad that he is playing in Super Bowl 46 today, but the star quarterback of the New England Patriots isn"t above checking out the big game via pirated means. News.com reports that during a press conference this week, Brady said:
Last year I was rehabbing my foot in Costa Rica, watching the game on an illegal Super Bowl Web site. And now I"m actually playing in the game. So, it"s pretty cool.
That frank admission shows how major live sports events such as the Super Bowl have been taken over by web sites that illegally stream them to millions of Internet users. As we reported earlier today, the US government shut down a number of web sites this week that have been accused of offering illegal video streams of live sports, including pay-per-view events.
If Tom Brady found himself back in Costa Rica this year instead of Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis playing against Eli Manning and the New York Giants, he wouldn"t need to use an illegal web site to view the Super Bowl this year. For the first time in history, the NFL will have an official live and free stream of the game on the NFL.com web site. The game can also be streamed at NBCSports.com where viewers will be able to choose from four different camera angles along with features such as rewind and pausing the video.