SportsDevil Review
Last Updated: Jan 12, 2022
| Rating |  |
| Price | Free |
| Features | Popular Kodi Add On |
| Watch Sporting Events | |
| Legality Unknown | |
| Use With a VPN |
What is SportsDevil
SportsDevil is a Kodi add-on that allows you to watch live sports events on your XBMC device.
You can find live sports options for nearly every sport including: Football, Boxing/WWE/UFC, Football, Basketball, Ice Hockey, Baseball, Tennis, Motorsport, Rugby, Darts, Snooker, Golf, and more.
The SportsDevil add-on hosts content from major sports leagues including NBA, NFL, UFC and the US Open Tennis Championships, to name a few. Whatever sport event you follow, SportsDevil will most likely have live streaming coverage and even replays to open. This Kodi add-on also covers local matches and college sports, and offers video stream qualities in 480p SD to 1080 HD.
SportsDevil Legality
If you live in a country like the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Australia, USA, Canada, you can potentially get into legal trouble for using SportsDevil. So its best to use a VPN for protection if you can afford a few dollars a month.
How To Install SportsDevil Kodi Add-On Guide
You can actually find SportsDevil on different repositories across the web. Most of these repos are well-maintained and constantly updated. For the installation process below, the repo used was last updated in June 2020.
- Launch Kodi
- Click the settings icon Kodi Settings Icon
- Click System settings
- Hover over Add-ons menu item and turn on Unknown sources if not already on
- Click back on remote to go back to System page
- Click File Manager
- Click Add source
- Click “None”
- Type the following url – https://loopaddon.uk/loop and click OK
- Highlight the box under the source that you just typed in and create a name for this media source and click OK
- Click your back button until you are back at the Kodi home screen
- Click Add-ons menu item
- Click the small “open box” icon at top left side of page under the “Add-ons heading” Install Kodi Addon
- Click Install from zip file
- Click loop or other name you assigned the media source in previous step
- Click repository.loop.zip
- Wait for Loop Repository Add-On installed message to appear
- Click Install From Repository
- Click Loop Repository
- Click Video Add-Ons
- Click SportsDevil
- Click Install
- Wait for SportsDevil add-on installed message to appear
- That’s it!
FACT vs SportsDevil
FACT, the UK-based Federation Against Copyright Theft, managed to get SportsDevil taken off of Github. The application was used to access streams of sports content, which FACT said violated the rights of copyright holders. Interestingly, they said it was “likely” that this was happening, but SportsDevil actually provided no content of its own. It merely allowed users to find streams.
Chilling Effect
FACT managed to get the application taken offline along with nearly 50 configuration files that the program used as pointers to links, according to reporting in TorrentFreak. The agency said that the application was scraping the web for illegal broadcasts and, thus, was used specifically for copyright infringement.
Unfortunately, this seems to set a poor precedent. There are many programs, including SickBeard, CouchPotato and others, that can be used in ways that FACT would, no doubt, find objectionable. Those same programs, like SportsDevil, provide no content of their own. Much as a driver can use a car to get back and forth from work or to drag race on a busy street, what users do with these applications is entirely up to them, but the applications themselves violate no one’s copyrights.
Is this Legal
Unlike most such notices, this notice doesn’t reference any laws. FACT is a UK organization and Github is located in the US. The takedown notice references laws in neither of those nations.
The application seems to have been taken down based wholly on suspicions and nothing more. It could provide access to illegal streams, but can provide access to entirely legal streams, as well. The Github site itself does allow developers to fix any issues that might have led to a DMCA request, which is a plus, but the developers of SportsDevil did not do so, hence, the application is gone.
This could feasibly set a standard where copyright holders and the agencies that represent them are allowed a great deal of power over what developers are allowed to share on the Internet. What’s more, apparently, those copyright holders and representative agencies don’t even have to reference a law to get applications removed. It’s the type of situation that might make Kafka blush, were he still alive.
Conclusion: if you are going to use SportsDevil its best to use it in conjunction with a VPN for protection.
Dangerous Precedent Set by Fact
With FACT lowering the bar for getting legitimate projects pulled from Github to “likely” violations of copyrights, it seems like there are few boundaries to protect developers or the people who rely on their software for legitimate purposes.
