It seems that watching pirate football is going to get very complicated for 2022, as a new sentence allows blocking websites that broadcast LaLiga without authorization each week . Spanish operators must enable a quick and easy blocking system, without prior judicial authorization to include new pages or services.
We recently learned that Movistar will issue LaLiga until 2027, it has paid almost 5,000 million euros and wants to make the most of it. A new ruling from the Commercial Court number 6 of Barcelona will help them fight piracy in a more agile way.
On the one hand, the judge authorizes the blocking of 40 pirate domains (addresses of web pages and IPTV services), and also gives permission for new weekly blocks to be made, so the operators must manage them in short terms.
Although using different DNS or a free VPN can avoid crashes, most users do not make these types of settings, so rights owners often consider that the operators’ filters on pirated domains are sufficient.
The ruling binds Movistar itself and the rest of the operators in Spain: Vodafone, Orange, Digimóbil and Grupo MásMóvil (which includes Yoigo, Pepephone, Euskaltel, Telecable, R and others).
This type of system has been very controversial, on the one hand it poses a risk that domains can be blocked quickly without a judge deciding on each one of them . On the other hand, in May 2021 we experienced a Twitch block in Spain due to an erroneous request, which demonstrated the lack of professionalism and guarantees when it comes to managing the blocks.
In addition, the judge considers that LaLiga’s request to protect its content from piracy is compatible with the regulations of the European Union. It is not clear if the sentence will be appealed, but it seems unlikely that the system will be reversed in the short term.
We have compiled some apps to watch football for free, completely legal, but they offer less and less matches and less relevant teams.
While entertainment platforms such as Netflix, HBO + or Disney + have defeated piracy by offering a higher quality service at a lower price, the world of football continues to choose the legal route to maintain very high prices for watching the games.
Of course, the weekly blocking of IPTV pirate football websites will be controversial . Although LaLiga considers that it is a good solution to protect their rights, it will be necessary to see if it works well, and also be attentive to the predictably high price that we will have to pay to watch football 2021-2022 on Movistar +.
