A clever YouTube channel has found a way to capitalize on the World Cup frenzy by streaming fake soccer matches simulated on FIFA 23. Some of these videos have racked up tens or hundreds of thousands of views, likely fooling people searching for pirated live streaming of the World Cup (Google Trends has seen a spike in interest in the term "World Cup stream" over the past week (Google Trends has confirmed that interest in the term "World Cup stream" has skyrocketed in the last week).

According to Vietnamese news site VNExpress, one reader noted that he was fooled by such a video, which was streamed near the start of the World Cup, and assumed it was simply a low-quality stream. They said (via machine translation), "It wasn't until I read the comments on the live stream and saw the close-ups of the players' faces that I realized it was footage from a FIFA 23 game simulating the World Cup."

The YouTube channel Minute90Kplus, featured by VNExpress, has recently uploaded a number of videos and live streams of World Cup matches simulated by eFootball (formerly PES) and FIFA 23. One stream posted on Tuesday had 214,000 views. However, based on YouTube's chat playback feature, these streams never seem to have a large number of active viewers. However, based on YouTube's chat playback feature, there never seems to be a large number of active viewers on these streams.

However, eFootball21 and FIFA23 are quite compelling, at least from camera angles high up the pitch. Drop the picture quality down to about 240p and you can see why people would be fooled.

A few seconds, right?

I found a few other World Cup channels in Vietnam, but they don't always try to completely hide the fact that the footage is fake. Still, their use of the #WorldCup2022 hashtag suggests they want to grab some of the World Cup traffic; FIFA says 3.57 billion people watched the 2018 World Cup.

The mock match trick is not limited to Vietnamese YouTube channels: the English-language channel Football Live, for example, has 1.25 million channel subscribers using the same technique, and countless YouTubers are using "BRAZIL vs. SOUTH KOREA LIVE Stream Watchalong," and have filmed themselves watching the World Cup with titles such as "SOUTH KOREA LIVE Stream Watchalong," attracting only a few eyeballs. Some of these videos are immediately followed by a couple of ads before they are watched, guaranteeing a little ad revenue from viewers who bounce as soon as they realize they are not going to actually watch the matches.