Combating Sports Piracy: The Liability of Technical Intermediaries at the Core of Blocking Measures
Key Takeaway
The piracy of sports broadcasts represents a major economic risk for the professional sports sector. Several rulings issued by the Paris Judicial Court in June and July 2025 extended blocking measures to all technical intermediaries, who are considered contributors to sports piracy.
Sports broadcast piracy constitutes a systemic economic threat to the entire professional sports industry. This large-scale piracy undermines the financial foundation of both professional and amateur sports in France.
Several decisions rendered by the Paris Judicial Court in June and July 2025 have extended blocking measures to all technical intermediaries, including Internet Service Providers (ISPs), alternative domain name providers (DNS), and Virtual Private Network (VPN) service providers, who are regarded as contributors to the piracy of sports events.
After reviewing the issue of sports piracy, this article analyzes the legal framework and recent court decisions concerning the fight against the unlawful streaming of sports competitions.
1. The Issue of Sports Event Piracy
Sports event piracy involves the unlawful capture of the economic value of live broadcasts. The damage suffered by rights holders is both immediate and irreversible: once a sports event has been viewed through an illicit channel, its economic value for the legal offer is lost, even if court-ordered measures are later implemented.
It is therefore essential to act swiftly by adopting rapid and preventive judicial measures to block illegal websites and services.
According to the French Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (ARCOM), illegal consumption of audiovisual and sports content resulted in an estimated loss of €1.5 billion in 2023 for players in the French audiovisual market. The sports sector alone is estimated to lose around €290 million per year. (1)
The phenomenon is growing. Approximately 18% of French people reportedly watch sports competitions illegally, a figure that rises to 37% among League 1 football viewers. The main reason given by viewers is the high cost of sports channel subscriptions (around €15 per month for BeIN Sports or the new Ligue 1+ channel). However, this argument cannot justify piracy. (2)
Sports piracy generally falls into three main categories of services:
- Live streaming websites, which illegally broadcast matches by multiplying mirror domain names provided by alternative domain name (DNS) operators to circumvent court-ordered blocking. This requires ARCOM to issue regular updates to blocklists;
- Pirate IPTV services, whose use has increased sharply. These illegal set-top boxes or subscriptions offer “all-inclusive” packages that aggregate premium channels at minimal cost, competing directly with legitimate platforms. According to ARCOM, more than 5,000 IPTV services (not limited to sports) have been blocked since early 2025; (3)
- Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), which allow users to bypass geographic restrictions by masking their device’s IP address and accessing illegal content broadcast from abroad.
These services (streaming, IPTV, VPN) simply reflect the technological evolution of methods used to bypass legitimate offers. Consequently, the fight against illegal access to sports content can no longer be limited to hosting providers or content publishers. It must extend to the entire content distribution chain, particularly the technical intermediaries operating upstream.
2. The Regulatory Framework for Combating Sports Piracy
To effectively combat piracy, the legal framework has evolved to enable swift technical action to block illegal services, thereby reducing economic harm.
This regulatory framework is primarily based on Article L.333-10 of the French Sports Code, complemented by the LCEN and intellectual property law. ARCOM is the authority responsible for the operational implementation of the measures ordered by the courts.
2.1 Article L.333-10 of the Sports Code: A Key Tool to Protect Broadcasting Rights
Article L.333-10 of the Sports Code forms the legal foundation for recent court decisions. This provision is specifically designed for sports competitions, given the urgency inherent to live broadcasting.
Holders of audiovisual exploitation rights (such as sports federations, event organizers, broadcasters, and sports leagues) may bring a case before the court “in the event of serious and repeated infringements of their rights by any person capable of contributing to remedying the infringement.” The targeted entities include not only hosting providers and content publishers, but also technical intermediaries involved in distributing sports contents.
Article L.333-10 allows preventive and dynamic intervention against unlawful broadcasting, empowering judges to issue ex ante blocking orders, for example, from the very first day of a championship. The court’s decision may also include the automatic extension of blocking measures to future sites detected by ARCOM.
Blocking measures must, however, remain proportionate and be limited to the duration of the competition (ranging from a few hours to several months).
2.2 Supplementary Legal Bases: LCEN and the Intellectual Property Code
The French Law on Confidence in the Digital Economy (LCEN) and the Intellectual Property Code also provide legal grounds for judges to order blocking measures, even outside the sports domain. (4)
2.3 The Operational Role of ARCOM
In the fight against sports piracy, ARCOM serves as the enforcement arm for implementing judicial orders.
Its mission includes: i) verifying and documenting the illegal nature of targeted services; ii) notifying intermediaries of the blocking measures to be implemented; and iii) monitoring and updating the lists of pirate sites to be blocked throughout the competition period.
ARCOM has also launched public awareness campaigns highlighting the economic consequences of piracy, such as the “Protect Your Sport” campaign broadcast in June 2024.
3. Judicial Response to the Fight Against Sports Broadcast Piracy
Four blocking orders were issued within a few days in June and July 2025 by the Paris Judicial Court (Tribunal judiciaire). These rulings broaden the range of actors subject to blocking measures by targeting the illegal dissemination of sports competitions upstream, through the involvement of technical intermediaries such as Internet Service Providers (ISPs), alternative DNS operators, and VPN service providers. (5)
These cases concerned the French League 1 and League 2 football championships, the MotoGP Championship, and the WTA women’s tennis tournament.
3.1 The Holder of Broadcasting Rights Has Standing to Act
The first question raised concerned the plaintiffs’ standing to bring legal action. Under Article L.333-10 of the Sports Code, the judges confirmed that blocking injunctions could be brought not only by professional sports leagues that market audiovisual rights to competitions, but also by audiovisual media companies holding exclusive broadcasting rights for sports events or competitions.
Accordingly, the standing (qualité à agir) of the French Professional Football League (LFP) and LFP Media was confirmed, as well as that of the rights holders operating under licensing agreements, such as SECP and BeIN Sports France, which operate sports-focused television channels.
Exclusivity of exploitation may apply to an entire competition or only to a portion thereof, as long as the infringement of audiovisual broadcasting rights is both serious and repeated.
3.2 Blocking Measures Are No Longer Limited to Illegal Streaming Sites and Hosting Providers
To enhance the effectiveness of anti-piracy measures for sports programming, blocking orders may be issued against “any person capable of contributing to remedying the infringement.” This provision of Article L.333-10 enables the courts to extend blocking measures to technical intermediaries, including ISPs, VPN, and DNS service providers operating upstream in the dissemination of illegal content.
In cases brought by SECP and BeIN Sports France against several VPN providers, the court confirmed that VPN services constitute technical intermediaries capable of contributing to the cessation of the infringement due to their role in circumventing geoblocking measures and masking IP addresses.
In the case between BeIN Sports France and several VPN providers, the judges held that ordering blocking measures against VPN services does not conflict with European Union law, particularly the e-Commerce Directive, since these measures are neither abstract nor general. Indeed, the measures ordered under Article L.333-10 are limited in scope: they target a specific sports competition (in this instance, the WTA tournament), have a limited duration (the length of the tournament), apply to a defined territory (mainland France and overseas departments and territories), and concern a restricted number of domain names.
3.3 Blocking May Be Ordered for the Duration of a Competition or Championship
Blocking measures are no longer temporary. They may be issued to block identified illegal streaming sites within three days of notification of the judicial decision and remain in effect for the entire duration of the competition or championship, whether the events take place in France or abroad. However, the duration of the blocking order cannot exceed twelve months.
For instance, in the case concerning the FIM World Championship (MotoGP), the blocking order was applied from February 28 to November 16, 2025.
To protect the broadcasting rights for the 2025–2026 Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 football seasons, blocking was ordered from August 8, 2025, to May 24, 2026.
Similarly, the blocking of unlawful retransmissions of the WTA women’s tennis tournament was ordered for the entire 2025 season, running from December 23, 2024, to November 10, 2025.
3.4 Blocking Orders are Not Limited to Websites Identified at the Time of the Court Decision
Since new illegal websites can emerge at any time, effective blocking measures must be dynamic to ensure lasting impact. Article L.333-10 II of the Sports Code expressly provides that blocking orders may apply to any online communication service, whether identified or not at the time of the order, that unlawfully broadcasts a sports competition or event.
Given the rapid proliferation of pirate domain names, rights holders may notify ARCOM of any newly identified illegal service in order to automatically extend the blocking measure until the end of the blocking period (i.e., until the final match or the conclusion of the tournament).
The rulings issued by the Paris Judicial Court in June and July 2025 illustrate a consistent application of Article L.333-10 of the Sports Code. The purpose of this provision is to protect the legitimate broadcasting ecosystem by allowing rights holders to: i) respond more swiftly through preventive intervention, which must be applied within three days; ii) obtain blocking orders against illegal websites and related services providing access to such sites, through dynamic blocking (where the list of blocked sites and services may be updated by ARCOM); and iii) extend the scope of technical intermediaries subject to blocking orders, particularly to VPN and DNS service providers.
The issue of sports broadcast piracy is, of course, not limited to France. In 2021, the European Audiovisual Observatory published a report examining the legal frameworks in EU Member States and the United Kingdom for combating sports piracy. (6) The goal of this report was to identify the countries that had enacted specific legislation to address sports piracy, while noting that several European countries still lacked adequate regulation.
Beyond identifying new technological tools used to bypass geoblocking, one of the key challenges remains cross-border cooperation, particularly when dealing with pirate platforms hosted in countries, within or outside the European Union, where appropriate regulatory mechanisms are lacking.
(1) ARCOM Report on the Fight Against Piracy, November 2024 (in French)
(2) “Illegal Streaming: The Sports Industry Loses €290 Million per Year,” FranceInfo Sport, November 28, 2024; “Piracy: Nearly One in Five French People Watch Sports Competitions Illegally,” FranceInfo Sport, May 14, 2025 (in French)
(3) “Illegal IPTV: 5,000 Sites Have Been Blocked Since January 2025, ARCOM President Reports,” 01 Net, October 1, 2025 (in French)
(4) Law No. 2004-575 of June 21, 2004, on Confidence in the Digital Economy, as amended (LCEN), Articles 6-3 et seq.; Article L.336-2 of the Intellectual Property Code
(5) TJ Paris, 3rd ch., 19 June 2025, n°25/01464, SECP v. Proton AG, NordVPN AG, Surfshark Ltd et al. ; TJ Paris, 3rd ch., 10 July 2025, n°25/07645, LFP and LFP Media v. Canal+ Telecom, Free, Orange et al. ; TJ Paris, 3rd ch., 17 July 2025, LFP and LFP Media ; TJ Paris, 3rd ch., 18 July 2025, n°25/05968, BeIn Sports France v. Proton AG, Cyberghost SRL and NordVPN SA
(6) “Mapping report on national remedies against online piracy of sports contents”, European Audiovisual Observatory, December 2021
Bénédicte DELEPORTE
Avocat
Deleporte Wentz Avocat
www.dwavocat.com
November 2025