Who pays for that then? There must be some reason SBS doesn't allow viewers outside Australia.

Edit: Seems SBS is partially funded by the Australian govt, ie taxpayers.

And so can I using the convenient Firefox VPN...

Absolutely. In Canada one of the big media companies had exclusive rights to broadcast the games. They do offer OTA broadcast if you have a digital antenna, although I don't know if everything game was available there. Otherwise it was a $30/month subscription to TSN+ or I believe they had a discount to get access for the e entirety of the world cup for $50-$70 (can't quite remember).

Someone paid for those free-to-air broadcasts. They reclaim the money from advertisement. For example, in Germany, ARD and ZDF paid €152M for the rights to air the 2026 World Cup. To answer your question: any stream from non-ARD/non-ZDF source, or a source not directly sub-licensing the stream from those two, is an unauthorized stream.

You can't just put it up on the internet because it "came free". Putting a German stream for viewers not physically in Germany would be even worse.

I think FIFA has been doing blatant bribery for much longer than just this World Cup.

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To say that it's American money in specific is laughable. The internet hasn't worked well on a matchday for quite some time in Spain due to their draconian laws around blocking piracy.