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.

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.