MUMBAI: LaLiga president Javier Tebas said he is prepared to collaborate with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to stamp out piracy of sports broadcast and streaming signals in Europe and all over the world. Speaking at sports and tech conference Sportel Monaco 2024 on 29 October during a keynote address he addressed his pet subject for the past few years once again: piracy and how big tech is aiding in its spread.
He pointed that piracy – especially illegal internet streaming - is causing huge losses to sports federations, broadcasters, and advertisers with the LaLiga alone losing around Euros 700 million each season.
His belief is that big tech companies like Google, Cloudflare, X, are actually benefiting from piracy. (He has raised his voice against Google in the past on several forums but he expanded the responsibility towards X and Cloudflare in his latest address during Sportel Monaco.)
He explained that Google is making money through searches online and on android phones through its ads that pop up during searches for pirated sites by viewers. Downloads of illegitimate apps on its Playstore give it oodles of money. It has no mechanism – either reactive or otherwise – to tackle piracy.
Cloudflare is profiting by providing reverse proxy services to pirates and more than 50 per cent of rogue sites are behind it. What’s alarming according to him is that 70 per cent of delisted content by Google is behind a Cloudflare IP.
X, he highlighted, is monetising through advertising on pirated streams and has been delaying enforcement by not providing automatic content detection. It does not have a content moderation team, neither is it blocking illegal content on its platform.
He appealed to sports federations to come together and raise their voices against big tech. In this regard he extended his hand towards the BCCI welcoming it to come and be a part of the anti-piracy campaign.
“After football, cricket has a large fan base globally and revenue leakages through piracy could be reduced by making the tech companies culpable,” he said. “The federations, accompanied by the broadcasters, need to lobby with governments to put in place the proper legislation.”
Tebas requested governments world over to pass legislation that would force big tech companies to clamp down on piracy. For the "how of doing it," he said, they can turn to Argentina where a federal court ordered Google to block the download and use of a pirate platform Magis TV. Prior to this, Google had cited its inability to block the android application from being downloaded, but then it was forced to.
“We need hard measures to be put in place.If we have to stand a chance of reducing the menace of piracy, ” said Tebas in closing.
