LaLiga renews anti-piracy agreement with Belgian Pro League

Spain’s LaLiga and Belgium’s Pro League have renewed an anti-piracy agreement.

In an announcement published yesterday, July 25, LaLiga said the agreement, which the leagues previously signed in March 2018, would be extended for another season.

Under the terms, LaLiga had been implementing its own detection and analysis tools to remove pirated streams of Belgian football from social networks, fake profiles, apps and streaming websites.

Last year, TBO reported that the Spanish football league had created a research unit, which identifies illegal streaming of the Pro League matches on the internet.

The extended agreement will ensure that more illegal streams of football games in Belgium are taken down, La Liga said.

LaLiga said the results of the 2018 agreement indicated the “efficiency of the collaboration”.

More than 700 apps, which generated more than ten million downloads, were removed from Google Play and iTunes, and LaLiga also removed more than 100 profiles from social media platforms.

According to LaLiga, in total, 23,652 illegal videos were taken down and 5,700 live streaming links were removed from Google’s search engine by the end of last year’s season.

Melcior Soler, the director of LaLiga's audiovisual department, said the renewal was an indication that the anti-piracy work carried out in collaboration with the Belgian league is “bearing fruit”.

“Fighting against piracy is a priority for LaLiga and the Pro League and together we'll continue to invest in technical tools and human resources to keep developing in this field,” Soler said.

Pierre François, the CEO of Belgium’s Pro League, added: “The numbers from last season show that the battle against piracy is more important than ever before.”

François said: “Our effective collaboration with LaLiga forms a crucial part of our anti-piracy action plan.”

“Currently we are having discussions with various stakeholders to increase our battle against piracy to continue to safeguard the value of our competition in the future. The renewal and optimisation of our agreement with LaLiga reinforces this intention,” he added.