In late 2024, a commercial court in Barcelona authorised LaLiga and its broadcast partner to order Spanish internet providers to block IP addresses linked to illegal streams of football matches.
The ruling allowed dynamic blocking during live games, giving the league a legal instrument to act quickly against sites that restream its content.
Earlier this year, the same court rejected attempts by Cloudflare and security conference RootedCON to overturn the decision, stating there was no proof of harm to third parties.
Armed with this judicial backing, LaLiga instructed providers to block shared IP addresses used by Cloudflare and other infrastructure companies whenever they believed pirates were hiding behind them.
In practice, this meant that large portions of the internet disappeared for Spanish users during match days, including perfectly legitimate sites that happened to use the same services.
A Football League as De Facto Regulator
LaLiga argues that such powers are necessary.
The league says that in May 2025, 38 per cent of piracy involving its content travelled through Cloudflare’s infrastructure. Executives claim the company acts as a digital shield for illegal platforms, refusing to cooperate with notices.
In public statements, LaLiga insists its blocking is targeted and lawful, not massive and indiscriminate, and accuses some technology firms of protecting criminal networks for profit.
From the league’s perspective, this concerns survival. Sports rights finance clubs, youth academies and entire local economies.
LaLiga has invested heavily in an anti-piracy unit and now cites a 60 per cent drop in domestic piracy during the 2024-25 season. It also pushes Brussels to turn non-binding recommendations on live sports piracy into hard European law.
Fighting piracy deserves support. Whether a private competition organiser should hold practical power to decide which parts of the internet ordinary citizens can reach, even temporarily, raises different concerns. Today the target is football.
Tomorrow it could be film, music, news media, or any content industry willing to argue that urgent action justifies cutting off shared infrastructure.
The Cost of Blunt Instruments
Cloudflare and other providers tell a different story.
Their services host or protect millions of sites at once, from small shops to emergency resources. Blocking an IP shared by many customers hits pirates and bystanders together. Cloudflare’s chief executive called the strategy bonkers and warned that infrastructure blocks could eventually affect critical online services during matches.
Real-world effects are already visible. Vercel, a popular platform for developers, reported that its infrastructure became unreachable for Spanish visitors after LaLiga-related blocks.
Users complained that personal pages, small businesses and online tools went dark whenever certain games were played. A court order intended for a few streaming sites ended up affecting parts of the wider web.
Ordinary people have responded predictably.
Proton VPN saw sign-ups from Spain surge by hundreds of per cent on affected weekends, as users routed their traffic outside national networks to avoid the blocks. That workaround restores access, but it also shows how quickly heavy-handed enforcement trains citizens to circumvent local rules entirely.
Europe’s Anti-Piracy Crossroads
LaLiga is not alone in demanding stronger tools. Rights holders across Europe argue that live sports are especially vulnerable because a stream has value only in real time. They see quick blocking orders as the only way to protect what they paid for.
The European Union Intellectual Property Office has already reported that the Commission’s 2023 recommendation on tackling live sports piracy has not significantly changed behaviour, and LaLiga now urges Brussels to legislate.
Digital rights advocates counter that Spain has gone too far. They warn that letting private organisations trigger broad infrastructure blocks, with limited transparency and oversight, sets a precedent that other sectors could copy. The temptation is clear: it is easier to switch off a whole address than to examine what runs on it.
Once this mechanism exists, expanding its use becomes a matter of lobbying rather than principle.
Who Should Govern the Network?
LaLiga’s determined action works on some metrics.
Fewer illegal streams exist in plain sight. At the same time, large numbers of unrelated websites have been caught in the crossfire, and more people have started using tools designed to evade national controls.
The deeper issue is governance. When courts grant a sports league authority over how infrastructure is used, they quietly shift the boundary among public regulation and private interest.
Decisions that affect small businesses, developers and independent creators end up driven by the urgency of protecting broadcast rights on a Saturday night. If this model spreads, it will not stop at football. Film studios could demand similar powers during premieres.
Music labels could target concert streams. News organisations could seek blocks during breaking events. Each industry would argue its case is unique and urgent, and each would be partly right.
The question Europe faces is not whether to fight piracy, but whether to hand private entities the keys to the network itself. LaLiga has already answered that question for itself. The rest of the continent is still deciding whether its model is a warning or a template.
Keep up with Daily Euro Times for more updates!
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