Which Midwest state is illegally streaming sports the most?

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 06:00:28 -0500

Watching sports has become more difficult than ever, especially if you're someone who doesn't pay for cable. Streaming services are slowly becoming the norm and depending on the night, a game could be on anyone of them. With the price for each service continuing to rise as well, some have resorted to illegally streaming sports on their computers or phones. So which states have been the biggest culprit?

Midwest states that are illegally streaming sports

To find the answer to this question, a study was done by Action Network to determine which states were streaming illegally the most. The sports website analyzed Google search volume over the past 12 months to pinpoint how many searches for illegal sports streaming were being performed in every state in the U.S.

Landing at the top of the list for states in the Midwest was Illinois, which saw just under 500,000 searches over the past 12 months. The FIFA World Cup in particular saw the largest number of illegal sports streaming searches in the state, with just over 130,000. Searches for NFL games were the second most popular with a little over 38,000.

Michigan saw a total of 291,200 illegal sports searches, with the World Cup again leading with over 64,000 searches, followed by the NFL with just under 24,000.

Other notable Midwest states include Minnesota with over 162,000 searches, led by the World Cup (49,130 searches) and NFL (15,800 searches), and Wisconsin with just under 140,000 searches, similarly led by the World Cup (33,950 searches) and NFL (14,780 searches).

Wisconsin actually finished with the second-lowest search rate in the country, per 100,000 residents, with just a touch more illegal stream searches per capita than Oklahoma, which was ranked last.

As for the rest of the Midwest, Ohio finished with the second most total searches in the area at 344,00 searches for illegal sports streams, with over 30,000 of those searches for NFL games.

Indiana rounded out with just under 194,000 searches and Iowa finished with 108,000.

Finally, North and South Dakota had roughly 23,000 and 26,000 searches apiece.

Where are people illegally streaming?

Outside of just using a phone or computer to search for a website illegally streaming sports, Action Network found that a significant number of people were using other devices. In particular, the top two types were jailbroken Amazon Firesticks and unauthorized IPTV services.

The rest of the country

Outside of the Midwest, New York landed at the top of the list with the most per capita searches in the country and the third most total searches at a little over 1 million searches for illegal sports.

California finished with the most total searches with a little over 1.6 million followed by Texas with just under 1.2 million searches.

Check out the full list of how each state ranked by how many searches for illegal sports streams they had per capita below:

New York
New Jersey
Delaware
Maryland
Rhode Island
Connecticut
California
Massachusetts
Virginia
Nevada
Florida
Georgia
North Carolina
Illinois
Texas
Washington
Vermont
Wyoming
Iowa
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
Arizona
Kansas
Colorado
Oregon
Hawaii
Louisiana
Utah
Tennessee
New Hampshire
North Dakota
Alaska
New Mexico
Ohio
Michigan
Maine
Mississippi
South Dakota
Kentucky
Minnesota
Indiana
Nebraska
West Virginia
Missouri
Alabama
Idaho
Montana
Arkansas
Wisconsin
Oklahoma

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Which Midwest state is illegally streaming sports the most?

Midwest states that are illegally streaming sports

Where are people illegally streaming?

The rest of the country