When you pirate football, they pirate you.

The match is about to start. The team lineups are already known. Seven clicks. That's all it takes. That's what it takes, on average, for someone to access an illegal broadcast of the match from a search engine. Guillermo Rodríguez, head of LALIGA's Anti-Fraud Office, explains that each of these thresholds crossed entails a risk of which we are not sufficiently aware: "Piracy is not just a business that moves billions. When you access these illegitimate platforms for free, what you risk is having your personal information stolen and trafficked; you are hacking yourself."

In Spain, on average, internet users access audiovisual content irregularly 8.5 times a month. This is roughly the same as the rest of Europe, according to the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) report released earlier this year. But there is a significant difference: Spaniards pirate live broadcasts of sporting events, especially soccer, 30% more often.

"According to our calculations," says Rodríguez, "there are days when these illegal connections account for up to 30% of a match's viewership." What are the consequences of this practice, which affects all cultural and entertainment industries? In Europe, there are 65,000 families who make a living from football; for Spain, it accounts for 1.4% of its GDP, including direct and indirect jobs, according to LALIGA data. But, beyond the economic, the first consequences of this scourge affect the users themselves. Do we know what we're up against?

According to the EUIPO, eight out of ten users of piracy claim to be aware that turning to illegal sources can pose a threat, but when it comes down to it, they have no idea of the danger and everything that goes on behind the scenes when someone is watching their team's match without paying, in their living room. Interpol warns: piracy services generate income by selling data (personal information, browsing history, etc.) to third parties and redirecting users to other websites through misleading advertising. The threat is very real: the stolen information is marketed and ends up in the hands of mafias and organized gangs, with consequences that range from causing "the user to become a victim of scams," as explained by Chief Inspector José Luis Gómez Pidal of the Intellectual and Industrial Property Crimes Section of the National Police, to financial fraud, identity theft, or bank accounts emptied in minutes.

"Supporting piracy can indirectly mean supporting drug trafficking or even terrorism."

Guillermo Rodríguez, head of the LALIGA Anti-Fraud Office

“Piracy generates a lot of money. And those who earn it divert it to money laundering schemes such as drug trafficking and other crimes,” reports Chief Inspector Gómez Pidal. And he doesn't say it in vain. During Operation Kratos, in which LALIGA collaborated with Europol, a network that illegally distributed more than 2,500 television channels to more than 22 million users worldwide was dismantled. What was seized in the operation? Drugs, weapons, cryptocurrencies worth nearly €1.6 million, and €40,000 in cash. At the same time, at the end of last year, in Italy, authorities dismantled a pirate television network that generated, according to their estimate, around €3 billion a year: “The profit rate obtained from these illegal activities, and with much less risk, is equivalent to that of cocaine trafficking,” the prosecutor in charge of the case, Francesco Curcio, told the Financial Times at the time.

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You have pirate football, they have you | LALIGA

For all these reasons, Guillermo Rodríguez maintains that "many users are unaware that by accessing pirated content, they may be indirectly supporting other illegal activities, and that the money obtained through piracy can finance other types of criminal activities such as drug trafficking and even terrorism."

There is also ample evidence of these other cybersecurity risks. The December 2024 report by the research agency Walnut Unlimited and Industry Trust, the UK agency responsible for protecting audiovisual companies and their consumers, proved that more than 2.7 million British households were infected with computer viruses after installing illegal streaming apps on their Amazon Fire Sticks—a device for wirelessly connecting television and smartphones . So much so that Amazon recently banned the use of any unofficial apps on its devices to prevent further cases.

Those who consume pirated football become targets for cybercriminals.

Long gone are the days when piracy consisted of websites like Rojadirecta, which linked you through an impassable jungle of pop-up windows to an address where three out of four times what you saw wasn't the match you wanted, or, if you were lucky and got it right, what you saw was a faulty image with frequent interruptions. "It's become professionalized," Rodríguez summarizes; "now there's technology, like ITPV [Internet Protocol Television] where for a ridiculously low monthly subscription you get 25,000 channels in high definition and, of course, all the football." It's an industry in itself, parasitic on all others and evasive of police investigations and legal action.

A reality whose dangers become even more evident when compared with other statistics, such as the fact that by 2025, an average of more than 45,000 cyberattacks will occur daily in Spain, according to a report by the technology company Datos101 from last March. The two concepts, cybersecurity and piracy, are closely related.

"We have the technology and the legal framework to stop it. We just lack the will."

Guillermo Rodríguez, head of the LALIGA Anti-Fraud Office

For this illegal business to flourish, Rodríguez says, certain necessary collaborators are needed, who also benefit from the benefits of piracy: “We know the illegal apps that companies nevertheless refuse to remove from their stores [official app download platforms]; we know which services repeatedly infringe intellectual property, yet internet giants continue to host them on their servers and refuse to block or cut off their broadcasts.”

Every day, Rodríguez says, LALIGA sends a report to large companies locating IP addresses that broadcast illegal content. “They look the other way,” he says. Could they take action? Rodríguez's response is vehement: “Of course! It's a matter of lack of will.”

These suspicious apps , he explains, are a magnet for criminals to act, and they all have common elements: prices that are too low or free to access, dubious installation with excessive permissions, or a poor user experience.

The policy implemented by LALIGA, with legal protection, of immediately blocking these pirated broadcasts is having an effect: according to Rodríguez, the percentage of pirated broadcasts of the competition decreased significantly last season. In a statement from January 2025, president Javier Tebas, a champion of the battle against this illegal business, stated that if this policy were extended, "in one year it would be able to eradicate 80% of piracy." And that appears to be one of the active avenues.

A big risk that consumers can prevent

Consuming pirated content poses a serious risk, according to national and international law enforcement agencies, regulators, and authorities. Users are exposed to threats that compromise their security by voluntarily handing over what criminal networks operating underground are seeking.

Therefore, among other measures, they recommend always keeping your software and antivirus software up-to-date to ensure detection and blocking of known threats. If the system warns of a risk of infection, the alert should be heeded.

“It's key to choose official streaming services that offer a secure experience for user data,” says Rodríguez, who explains that, if at any time there is any doubt: “On the official LALIGA website, in the Where to watch LALIGA section, you can identify the broadcasters that are authorized to distribute the audiovisual rights in each of the countries around the world.”