In my mind it's fair game to record and watch anything, if it's an unencrypted, freely available broadcast somewhere (local laws here back me up) - That includes the use of VPNs to access it. Sports broadcasters know this and make the use of VPNs quite hard, still if you get it to work, good for you. That includes other sneaky trickery like VPNing into Switzerland, where rebroadcasting other countries' FTA TV is legal, if you can receive them there (e.g. all of the UK's FTA TV) or setting up a remote controlled TV receiver in the country for you own use.
Making these streams available publicly is a different game. Depending on where you live, passing on streams privately again may be OK - for example the country I live in allows passing on recordings to a handfull of friends.
If at any time during the chain from the broadcast to you there's a need to break an encryption to make this possible: No fair game, pirate!
If content is consumed via an illegal streaming site then it's potentially hurting revenues elsewhere.
By the time the content airs, the advertising money's mostly been made and traded already. In the terrestrial broadcasting world -- this is most definitely the case.