MADRID 11 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The piracy of sporting events continues to increase and although more than 10.8 million elimination notifications related to unauthorized retransmissions of live content were sent to digital intermediaries in 2024, 81 percent did not result in the suspension of said retransmission, according to a report prepared by Grant Thornton in collaboration with the ‘Live content
For the employer, this piracy “faces a unique situation, in which the measures requested by the European Commission not only apply, but are ignored in a large number of cases”, as detailed by this document that reveals that “online piracy continues to represent a significant risk for the holders of live events, such as LaLiga.”
Despite the recommendation of the European Commission issued in May 2023 to combat the unauthorized broadcast of live events, 2024 data reflect a worrying panorama with more than 10.8 million illegal broadcasts detected during the past year.
In this sense, only 2.7 percent of the infractions were served in the first 30 minutes, while 20 percent took more than 120 minutes to be managed and approximately 81 percent of these unauthorized broadcasts were not suspended, which evidences the lack of effectiveness of the European Commission’s recommendation and the limited cooperation of digital intermediaries.
“This problem directly affects organizations that depend on income from broadcasting live events, such as LaLiga, which is threatened to protect their intellectual property and sustain their business model,” they said from the agency that Javier Tebas chaired.
Similarly, specialized servers suppliers (DSP) received 52 percent of notifications, of which 89 did not result in the suspension of unauthorized retransmission of the live event, “an alarming figure since, in comparison, online platforms only ignored 2 percent of the notifications.”
However, it should be noted that the recidivism rate of online platforms when retransmitting pirate content on the same day is more than 90 percent. The DSP represented more than half of all notifications sent to digital intermediaries in 2024 and, on average, notifications were sent to 850 DSPS per quarter throughout the year.
“These data show that online piracy not only persists, but the efforts to stop it are not achieving a significant impact,” they warn from Laliga, which recalls that it is “one of the main organizations affected by piracy”, a scourge that involves “millionaire losses due to unauthorized retransmissions of their parties.” “The illegal transmission undermines the value of their audiovisual rights, a key source of income that finances not only clubs, but also social and sports development programs,” they stressed.
Although online platforms showed greater efficacy in the suspension of illegal content (98 percent of notifications served), DSPS remain an important obstacle, since only 11 percent of notifications led to the suspension of illicit transmissions.
LaLiga affects that the report highlights the need to reinforce cooperation agreements and accelerate withdrawal times and also underlines the importance of implementing additional measures specific to DSPS, who represent the largest source of illegal retransmissions not suspended.