Spanish LALIGA clubs are losing between €600 and €700 million a year as a result of online piracy, according to LALIGA president Javier Tebas.
Last season, LALIGA introduced new AI monitoring technology to monitor registration patterns, track suspicious behaviour in traffic and amplify the capacity of teams working to detect fraud. As previously reported in Broadband TV News, LALIGA has also been engaged in the dynamic blocking of IP addresses.
Speaking at the second edition of the LALIGA EXTRATIME industry forum in Singapore, Tebas said: “Fighting audiovisual fraud has a high cost for LALIGA, but we choose to lead, because the cost of not doing so is much higher. We are facing highly organised criminal networks that cause unimaginable damage across the economy.
“The scale of the challenge means that there must be total commitment at the institutional level and between companies, both in the sports industry and technology. This fight is global and collaborative, and we must also act by denouncing the inactivity of some intermediaries, who are allowing criminal content to be shared through their infrastructures,” he said.
Delegates heard that according to a report by the Live Content Coalition (LCC), 10.8 million illegal sports broadcasts were detected in Europe alone in 2024.
LALIGA participated in 2024 in Operation Kratos, led by Europol, which succeeded in dismantling a network of 22 million users in Europe. In this operation, weapons and drugs were also seized in searches. Legal milestones have also been achieved, such as the landmark ruling that allowed LALIGA to carry out dynamic IP blocking. In addition, LALIGA has strengthened its cooperation with responsible intermediaries such as Meta, YouTube or TikTok in recent seasons.
