Envy TV Review: $49.97 a month for access to pirated content
Envy TV operates in the streaming MLM niche. Instead of an actual corporate address, Envy TV provides a virtual office address in Nevada on its website.
Cited as co-founders of Envy TV are Clay Sampson and Eddie Freeman.
Beyond names however Envy TV fails to provide any information on either founder.
My own research lead me to Clay Sampson’s LinkedIn profile. At first I wasn’t sure this was Envy TV’s Sampson, but I was able to later confirm it with an Envy TV launch prelaunch marketing video.
Curiously, Envy TV is not listed on Sampson’s LinkedIn profile.
Instead he pitches his “TheClayCode” marketing company, which Sampson states
partner(s) with industry-leading direct selling organizations to empower sales professionals with smart, automated technology marketing solutions that drive recruiting, product sales, and client engagement.
Alexa traffic estimates for The Clay Code website suggest the business isn’t doing too well.
Between 2002 and 2007 Sampson was promoting World Leadership Group, a mortgage based MLM company.
World Leadership Group went under in 2008.
Last year Sampson was promoting Nui:
He appears to have bailed around the time Nui was sued by Texas for securities fraud in July.
Up until mid 2018 Eddie Freeman (right) was promoting KZ1, a supplement based MLM company.
Prior to October 2017 KZ1 was known as eXfuze. Freeman seems to have been with eXfuze for some time.
In the description of a 2012 eXfuze marketing video, Freeman claims to have already had 20 years experience in network marketing.
Read on for a full review of the Envy TV MLM opportunity.
Envy TV Products
Envy TV markets an IPTV service for $49.95 a month.
Despite advertising the service providing access to “over 1000 channels!”, Envy TV fail to disclose who their service provider is.
More importantly, Envy TV provides no broadcast agreements with any of the copyright owners of the content their IPTV service provides access to.
The Envy TV Compensation Plan
In order to qualify for MLM commissions, Envy TV affiliates must either
- recruit and maintain six active affiliates; or
- sign up with an affiliate package.
Envy TV offers three affiliates packages:
- Basic Startup – $257
- Field Affiliate Package – $497
There is also a $997 Senior Affiliate Package, which affiliates can “upgrade” to if they have six recruited active affiliates under them.
Note that an active affiliate is one who continues to pay $49.95 a month.
Recruitment Commissions
Envy TV pays affiliates to recruit new affiliates.
How much of a recruitment commission is paid out is determined by how much a newly recruited affiliate spends when they sign up:
- recruit a regular affiliate and receive a $10 commission
- recruit a Basic Startup affiliate and receive a $75 commission
- recruit a Field Affiliate and receive a $150 commission
If any personally recruited affiliates upgrade to the Senior Affiliate tier, an additional $300 recruitment commission is paid out.
Residual Recruitment Commissions
Residual recruitment commissions are tracked via a unilevel compensation structure.
A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team, with every personally recruited affiliate placed directly under them (level 1):
If any level 1 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team.
If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth down a theoretical infinite number of levels.
To qualify for residual recruitment commissions, an Envy TV affiliate must either
- maintain at least 200 directly and indirectly recruited downline active affiliates; or
- purchase a Basic Startup or higher affiliate package.
Once one of the above qualification criteria is met, a $2 residual commission is paid on every downline affiliate recruited into the unilevel team.
Certificate Bonus
Envy TV affiliate packages are bundled with recruitment certificates.
When these certificates are activated by recruited affiliates, a 2% commission is paid out.
Affiliate Bonus Program
Envy TV provides a volume bonus of up to 50% on monthly fees paid by downline affiliates.
In order to qualify for the Affiliate Bonus Program, each Envy TV affiliate must personally recruit and maintain at least six active affiliates.
Once that base qualification criteria is met, the Affiliate Bonus Program bonus rate is determined by total downline team numbers:
- have a downline of at least 200 active affiliates and receive a 10% bonus rate
- have a downline of at least 300 active affiliates and receive a 15% bonus rate
- have a downline of at least 600 active affiliates and receive a 20% bonus rate
- have a downline of at least 1000 active affiliates and receive a 25% bonus rate
- have a downline of at least 3000 active affiliates and receive a 30% bonus rate
- have a downline of at least 6000 active affiliates and receive a 35% bonus rate
- have a downline of at least 10,000 active affiliates and receive a 40% bonus rate
- have a downline of at least 15,000 active affiliates and receive a 45% bonus rate
- have a downline of at least 25,000 active affiliates and receive a 50% bonus rate
Joining Envy TV
Envy TV affiliate membership is either $49.95 a month.
Additional affiliate licenses can be purchased through one of three affiliate packs:
- Basic Startup – $257
- Field Affiliate Package – $497
There is also a Senior Affiliate Package for $997 that can be upgraded to, if an existing affiliate has recruited at least six active affiliates.
Conclusion
The first thing you need to look at with a streaming service MLM is whether the company has the rights to broadcast content.
Envy TV are aware of this and address this as the first question in their FAQ.
Is Envy TV legal?
The only answer to this question you want to see is “Yes, we have obtained licenses for all the content we broadcast from the relevant copyright owners.”
Here’s how Envy TV answers the question;
Currently under the US law it is not illegal to repackage or resell IPTV.
The FCC has held that the IPTV resales do not violate any franchise or exclusivity agreements with cable providers under federal law.
Also, if you are reselling broadcasts that are available online streaming on foreign servers as part of your IPTV packaging, courts have held this would not be a violation of the copyrights laws in the US.
That’s basically a long-winded way of saying “we broadcast pirated content and are hoping that nobody comes after us.”
Note that despite claiming US courts are fine with copyright infringement, no examples are cited.
For a real world example of what happens when an MLM company provides unauthorized access to copyrighted content, we need look no further than Dish Network LLC et al v. Tvizion, LLC et al.
In mid 2018 Dish Network sued TVizion (as part of 247 SmartLife) for providing unauthorized access to a UFC fight.
Dish Network didn’t care it was over IPTV, nor where the servers were located the provided the illegal stream.
Envy TV would have you believe defending such a suit would be as easy as rocking up to court and citing purported examples of US courts signing off on copyright infringement.
That of course didn’t happen. TVizion failed to defend the suit and Dish Network was eventually granted a $5.9 million judgment.
Dish Network’s judgment was calculated based on an estimate of the number of $49.95 a month subscriptions TVizion had sold.
$49.95 a month for access to pirated content. Sound familiar?
It should because Clay Sampson was a TVizion affiliate (note Jim Pshehalouk rebooted it as NuMedia after Dish sued him).
Rest assured if Envy TV was sued by a copyright holder they’d face a similar outcome to that of TVizion.
That’s on a company level though. As an affiliate you’re probably not going to get sued, but you’re still running around selling access to pirated content.
That’s a hit on your reputation and integrity as a marketer. And not something you’re going to get back should action be taken.
On the compensation side of things, Envy TV markets itself as a
Home-Based Business with Little Risk and Unlimited Potential for Wealth.
The problem is everyone in Envy TV is an affiliate with access to commissions.
MLM commissions are locked behind a six affiliate recruitment wall or purchase of an affiliate package.
Regular affiliates however still earn $10 on each affiliate recruited.
This alone is pyramid recruitment.
I have a feeling Envy TV would argue affiliates who haven’t recruited and/or purchased an affiliate package aren’t affiliates.
This argument was brought up by both Vemma and Herbalife in their respective FTC lawsuits.
Both times it was shot down.
The fact of the matter is a legitimate MLM company needs bona fide retail sales. Without which they’re operating as a pyramid scheme.
One final point I want to touch on is Envy TV’s affiliate packages.
The licenses bundled with these packages are essentially pre-paid affiliate memberships. These are not product purchases, because purchasing affiliate memberships as a product makes no sense.
Envy TV’s affiliate packages themselves are thus nothing more than prepaid recruitment tools.
Putting the copyright issue aside, one can’t even make the argument that affiliate packages contain something of consumer value.
Between pyramid recruitment and providing access to pirated content, Envy TV’s MLM opportunity leaves much to be desired.
Mortgage MLM? Lol. Borrow thousands of pounds against your house for the *sole* purpose of paying that borrowed money into an MLM pyramid as commission. Sounds totally suitable.
There is of course nothing wrong with paying commission to the guy who advised you on your mortgage and bundling that into the loan.
Paying commission from borrowed money to someone who had zilch to do with arranging the loan (other than recruiting your adviser) is another thing entirely.
Shows how ludicrous the mortgage market was before the credit crunch that such a thing was viable for at least 6 years.
And now one of its members is so desperate for an MLMable product he’s resorting to piracy. Go figure.
My Programming is Poor can’t get a lot of channels won’t play is there a reason or solution for this?
Yes, stop trying to access pirated content.
So I was part of Envy TV. When their Xtream Codes based panel went down in Sept. 2019, (The fed’s busted the ones overseas, 50M lost service) I attempted to offer assistance to Clayton (Acting CEO) to stop the bleeding in any way I could, being a founding member of his team, etc.
Clayton took offense to my choice of words, threw a giant fit and kicked me out of Envy TV when I would not kiss his ring. He is an ego-maniac, and demands blind loyalty to be part of his “Group.”
Unfortunately for him, and his partners in the firm (Eddie is a stand-up guy and needs to separate himself from unhinged Clayton immediately IMO), Clayton will drive this service into the ground.
You can tell a lot by a leader, and Clayton has zero leadership skills, instead blaming everyone but himself for the issues he has run into.
Avoid ENVY TV like the plague! While all IPTV services are iffy at best on their legality, EnvyTV will burn you the instant you step out of their perceived line.
IPP is Clayton’s motto, and we all wish he would actually follow it, instead of insult, degrade, and fly off the handle when things don’t go his way. Beware, He’s a loose cannon that is sinking the EnvyTV Ship!
If you want a true Network Marketing team to be apart of, IPTV services probably aren’t your best bet for long term wealth creation. And the leadership ability of Clayton, should let you know immediately that he’s not a man you want to follow!
I have a lawsuit against EnvyTV currently being processed. They are in big trouble.
BUYER BEWARE!
I have Envy TV and love it. I couldn’t ask for better.
You can reach either of the owners at any time and always get an honest answer to anything you ask! Don’t always believe a negative comment.
If you were kicked out it had to be because of your disgusting mouth or you’d still be there.
People need to try it for themselves to see that everything is legit and completely on the up and up….. there’s no contract so try it, you’ll like it!!
Has anyone asked why they’re selling access to pirated content?
Well OZ! Here we go again. I was with IXQtv that had one of the best streaming set-up out there.
I thought the same thing “Kim” was saying. Then IXQtv got hit with a cease and desist order.
The Company advised everyone of the cease and desist order and they shut the streaming service down when everyone billing date came up.
I was contacted today by a friend concerning Envy TV and was very tempted to get back on that horse, but after watching you guys do your extensive homework like you have done here and trusting you guys after seeing how correct you guys have always been, I decided to leave this one alone.
Thanks so much for what you guys do. Peace out!
My name is Eddie Freeman. I wanted to let you know that I have not been affiliated with EnvyTV since early February 2020.
I wish to personally apologize to anyone that had a negative experience. I tried my best to make it work, but there were too many obstacles for me to overcome.
I never had a say in anything other than a slight change in the compensation plan. All decisions are made by one man.
I was told on more than one occasion that if I didn’t like it, I should leave. I left. For more reasons than I have the time to write here!
For those of you that are with EnvyTV, I wish you the best. Who knows. Maybe one day the owner will show you proof of the legality of the pay per views and sports packages…
Sincerely, Eddie Freeman. PS. He won’t!!!
Clay is back at it again. Now selling covid test kits.
envycares.com/
Isn’t COVID-19 testing free in the US? Why on Earth would you buy the kits yourself?
They charge people $297 – $997 to be “distributors” much like the envy tv memberships, plus $60/month for a replicated website and back office.
They tell them to contact doctors and hospitals to re-sell them at a huge markup.
This program seems to be still going strong. Having a hard time finding actual information but it looks like its a mlm TV streaming service is the main product?
Plus an investment option where you get daily? weekly? returns on crypto? So far this blog has been the most informative.
Uh, “envytv.com” is disabled. Social media profiles have been deleted.
EnvyTV as reviewed here doesn’t exist anymore.