Audiovisual fraud is a criminal activity that results in significant losses in value for sporting competitions around the world, with a specific value loss between €600 million and €700 million in the case of Spanish football, an industry which employs more than 190,000 people and which contributes around €8,400 million to the Spanish economy, the equivalent of 1.44 per cent of Spanish GDP.

A report has been published by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) highlighting the evolution of audiovisual fraud in different sectors between 2017 and 2023, and it states that piracy of sporting events in Europe increased by 36.5 per cent between 2021 and 2023. In the case of Spain, the average access per user to pirated sports content per month remains some 25 per cent above the EU average.

However, this report does not cover the true prevalence of OTT use in the sharing of live sporting events, as detailed information isn’t available on this resource used by pirates. Yet, the estimates are that there are at least 4.5 million pirate streaming users in Europe.

Spain ranks as one of the countries with the highest rates of sports piracy in Europe, with one in three Spaniards consuming pirated content, according to estimates from the specialised consultancy agency YouGov in May 2024, and with 59 per cent of Spaniards specifically consuming pirated content at least once a month, according to Ampere data from the fourth quarter of 2023. Notably, according to a Grant Thornton report, up to 5.3 million live pirate streams were reported in Europe in the first half of 2024 alone.

Javier Tebas, president of La Liga, commented: “Piracy is a scourge against which the relevant measures are not being taken and, despite the hard work being carried out by the leagues and broadcasters, there is still a lot of protection from large companies such as Google, X or Cloudflare, who profit from it. We cannot mask the reality, which is that this issue affects us and impacts hundreds of thousands of people, so we have to face it and fight against it.”

Broadcasters and rights owners are joining forces to carry out coordinated actions to end this practice, with a recent example being an operation against IPTV users in Europe, with 22 million users and worth €3,000 million per year. Another recent example involved France’s LFP and its efforts against pirates, and there were alarming figures that some 55 per cent of the viewers of the recent Olympique de Marseille vs PSG match watched the game via illegal channels. And, on November 16th, Spain’s Guardia Civil blocked and removed all the channels of the biggest pirate streaming channel in Spain, called Cristal Azul. More than 78,000 users were illegally accessing La Liga football matches, fraudulent activity worth more than €42 million.

In July 2024, La Liga announced that it had reached the milestone of achieving more than 1,000 convictions against HORECA establishments committing audiovisual fraud. Meanwhile, on Telegram and looking from the 2022/23 season to the beginning of the 2024/25 season, more than 8,000 groups of offenders involving more than 45 million users have been shut down.