So, I’m usually very careful online and I rarely click on any unsolicited links or emails. But I got scammed last week and I’m still mad about it!
My daughter plays soccer for her middle school, and already has several friends on the high school soccer team as well. We’ve watched several high school soccer games in-person to support her school and her friends. And the high school soccer team has been doing fantastic and made their way to a State Championship game.
When it was time for the State Championship game, it was in another city several hours away so we couldn’t attend in-person. But an hour before the game, my daughter sent me a link and said there was a live-stream of it so we could watch.
My mistake is that I didn’t question where that link came from! My daughter has been in a soccer group chat and she’s frequently sent me links of game schedules, game scores, game photos, etc so I was already accustomed to her sending me links that worked out regarding soccer.
So I clicked this one and it went to a school sports live-stream site and it said I had to subscribe to view the live-streams. The subscription was like $9/month, but they said that the first month would be $1 only and I could cancel at any time. I already didn’t like that, because I do try to avoid subscriptions whenever possible. But I figured that $1 was a fair price for a live stream so I entered my debit card information.
And as soon as I did that, I realized my mistake. Because my email notifications started going off with all these multiple confirmations. And then I started getting text messages from my bank about these new charges that I did not agree to.

So I replied to my bank text messages that I didn’t do those charges and they shut off my card and the notifications stopped. But those charges could’ve gone on forever if I didn’t get my card turned-off. That’s crazy.
I started investigating that link my daughter sent me and it’s everywhere! If you search for your local school sporting events (especially high school), there are dozens of websites offering live-streams of the games – and they are all scams! They look legitimate because they know the team schedules and they tag all the schools.

And even the BBB Better Business Bureau is aware of this scam and have published this article warning people about it: High School Sports Live-Streaming Scam. Too bad I didn’t find this article until AFTER I got tricked.
Anyhow, I feel so stupid for falling for this, and I am so disappointed in all the bad people trying to scam others and steal money from them. I wish you all luck in avoiding scams like this, but even I got fooled! 🙁