La Liga’s continues to launch aggressive initiatives to combat piracy, despite proof they are impacting legitimate businesses.
La Liga’s war on piracy has sent the internet into a meltdown after websites which are not illegally streaming matches have been silently blocked.
Websites across Spain are reportedly being blocked without being told after the league received court approval to implement dynamic, instantaneous and direct IP blocking against piracy. While the impact the order has had on piracy is yet to be reported, the strategy is leading to unintended consequences, with websites which have no link to illegal streaming becoming collateral damage.
One affected site which has attracted significant online attention is Freedom.gov, a new initiative by the US Department of State and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency designed to help Europeans evade content bans.
Hosting platforms such as Cloudflare and Vercel serve thousands of unrelated websites from the same IP ranges, meaning blocking a single IP can take down many unrelated sites.
These sites are being caught up because the court order does not require La Liga to distinguish between infringing and non-infringing services. If a hosting provider or platform shares an IP range with a site accused of piracy, the entire range can be blocked.
Is there any way around it?
The issue follows a court order from April 2025 which enabled the league to block IPs associated with illegal football streams. Despite websites raising concerns about the initiative, La Liga doubled down on the strategy earlier this month.
On 17 February 2026, a Spanish court order that specifically targeted legal VPN providers NordVPN and ProtonVPN instructed them to block access from Spain to specific IP addresses identified as illegally streaming protected content.
Following the recent court order, NordVPN told Insider Sport: “Blocking does not eliminate the content itself or reduce the incentives for piracy.”
Despite concerns from VPN providers and a recent probe into random website blocking by Carles Enric, who owns an impacted site, La Liga does not appear to be backing down anytime soon.
La Liga told Enric his website is hosted on an IP address which violates the league’s intellectual property rights, before suggesting he contact the Cloudflare server to try to resolve the issue. Enric later contacted Vodafone about the problem and published the response on 25 February 2026 to his X profile.
“Good afternoon, currently there is no effective, guaranteed or mandatory mechanism to prevent ‘collateral damage’ nor to inform users of the real reason for the block,” Vodafone said.
“When all operators apply La Liga’s orders, we are complying with the ruling of Commercial Court No. 6 of Barcelona which authorises dynamic blocking until 2027 without requiring any technical mechanisms to prevent collateral damage.
“In conclusion, today there is no technical system imposed by law that obliges operators to discriminate better and avoid affecting third parties. Operators are authorised not to notify anything.
“The ruling allows blocking without prior notification to users and without transparency regarding the affected IPs.
“The IP lists are updated in real time during the match and operators apply the blocks immediately, without warning, which causes the user to simply see that ‘the website does not load’, where they then see the blocking message.”
La Liga’s aggressive tactics
La Liga’s failure to resolve the issues facing legitimate websites aligns with its win at all costs approach to piracy. In addition to blocking IPs, the Spanish top flight has launched several other eye-catching initiatives.
Last month saw the launch of La Liga’s new informant scheme, which incentivises people to anonymously report bars, hotels or cafes that are illegally streaming games in exchange for a €50 reward.
The league stresses aggressive measures are working, as in September 2025, La Liga surpassed 1,600 convictions against hotel, restaurant and catering establishments which fraudulently and illegally broadcast national competition matches.
According to La Liga estimates, piracy causes the national football industry to lose around €600-700m annually. These losses play a significant role in the league’s efforts to close the revenue gap with the Premier League. Last year, La Liga secured a record €6.13bn in domestic broadcast rights for the 202728 through 2031/32 cycle.
At the time, La Liga President Javier Tebas partly attributed the result to anti-piracy efforts.
“This result reflects the strength of our product and the trust of broadcasters, largely driven by our committed fight against piracy, which has helped increase operators’ user bases, and by the clubs’ dedication to enhancing audiovisual content and offering the best possible fan experience,” Tebas said.
