MADRID, 19 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The president of LaLiga, Javier Tebas, made it clear this Thursday that his organization has “more knowledge than what people think” about how to combat audiovisual piracy, a scourge about which they are “concerned”, but which they know how to combat. “what is the solution” and for which only “that final step is missing” to put an end to it “massively.”
“The world of audiovisual piracy is an almost personal obsession for everyone who is in the audiovisual sector and the damage it causes is multimillion-dollar. We have to focus on where we are, but we have much more knowledge than people think and we work harder what people think,” Tebas expressed during Europa Press’ ‘Sports Breakfast’ about piracy in sporting events sponsored by DAZN, Unicaja Banco, Loterías y Apuestas del Estado and Vithas.
The leader considers that his organization is “the best in the world” when it comes to combating this scourge due to the specific unit they have and that is “exclusively dedicated” to this issue through “five technological tools created in-house.”
However, he stressed that in football “there has been a rebound in the first days, at a national and global level” from what they have been able to verify with the audiences, since although they have “increased”, it is contrasted with the fact that they have suffered” paying subscribers,” with 14 percent coming “from non-rights holders. “Compared to three seasons ago, it has increased four points, it is a very high percentage,” he lamented.
Another way to learn how the world of piracy works is through the applications that can be ordered from ‘Apple’ and ‘Google’. “In downloads of pirated applications, until the fifth day of the League, on ‘Android’ there have been five million worldwide and 900,000 in Spain. On ‘Apple’, at European level there have been more than one million and we estimate 3000,000 in Spain “he pointed out.
In this sense, “after a battle of many years”, LaLiga has managed to remove these ‘apps’, while ‘Apple’ “takes longer”, but does not forget that “the problem is that when the pirate has downloaded it it is already on the mobile phone and can use it as long as that application is ‘live’. This has led them to detect that “45 percent are still being used after a year”, so it is not enough for them to remove them from these ‘stores’, and Tebas also detailed that the ‘APKs’ are “proliferating”, which consist of downloading these ‘apps’ through the ‘url’ environment.
“We are worried, but we know what the solution is. We understand the phenomenon and how to stop it,” stated the president of LaLiga that detecting “traceability to know its origin and who is issuing it, how it is distributed and advertised, is key in this fight.” . “We have it perfectly controlled and we have located 46,000 ‘IP’ that are broadcasting LaLiga for free every day,” he said, highlighting that “they are sold through channels such as ‘Telegram’, ‘Facebook’ or ‘Discord’.”
Furthermore, Javier Tebas calls for “moving forward in the legal field”: “I sent a message to the Government and the EU saying that we had to stop crying so that they would make laws for us and work more on technology so that when the laws are in place we can eliminate piracy.” , he commented.
The leader referred to “two important resolutions” of the EU, one from last March, the Digital Services Law, in which “a very important figure such as the reliable whistleblower” appears. “It is a private entity that offers services to the State and tells it which ‘IP’ in the world is retransmitting illegal content so that it can be identified and cut off,” he explained.
The other is an EU “recommendation” from last May “on how to cut the signal from live events.” “If this reliable alerter communicates it, in 30 minutes we have to cut the live broadcast,” warned Tebas, who believes that “the problem today” is that only Italy has “developed” this recommendation. “The EU is going to monitor the countries and in March it will make a final verification. For Spain it would be good, but we have to see which Public Administration body decides it because we don’t know,” he remarked.
“We are missing that final step to put an end to piracy on a massive scale because we already do it in a timely manner through precautionary measures. We are sending 500 ‘IP’ every week so that the court can issue a precautionary measure so that they cannot connect. For For nine years we have had the technology and the EU is complying, and now we want Spain to take that step to have a reliable alerter and a law like Italy’s to prevent pirate users who want to enter into direct events,” he stated.