Football league loses $800m to illegal streaming, uses AI to stop it

A study by Grant Thornton recorded more than 10.8 million unauthorised retransmissions of live events in 2024, and over 81% were never suspended at all. Now LaLiga, the Spanish football league that hosts the world's most-watched club matches, is installing artificial intelligence to close that gap in real time.

Piracy is estimated to cost LaLiga around $700 million to $800 million per year, and this includes subscription loss, reduced broadcasting revenue, and impact on income that is used for transfers, payroll, and investments.

Among its clubs, LaLiga features Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Atlético Madrid, some of the most watched football clubs in the world. It is this huge fan base that has led to the existence of such pirated streams, since there is high demand and quick recovery by pirates after the sites are shut down.

For years, IP blocking was the default tool against illegal streams. The method is blunt: restrict access to known offending addresses. But pirate services adapt fast, spinning up under new addresses within minutes and often returning before a major match ends.

Grant Thornton's research found that only 2.7% of unauthorised streams were removed within the first 30 minutes of detection in 2024. That window is critical; most viewing spikes happen in the opening stages of a match, meaning delayed removal does little to protect the broadcast value of the event.

How are LaLiga and Fastly using AI differently?

LaLiga has been working with infrastructure firm Fastly on a system that targets content signals rather than IP ranges. Instead of broad network blocks, the technology identifies patterns in the stream itself linked to copyrighted broadcast material, allowing faster, more precise flagging.

"Unlike alternative approaches based on regional blocking, our strategy focuses on precision, letting fans enjoy the game while protecting content from abuse by criminals," said Fastly Chief Product Officer Kelly Shortridge.

The idea is to narrow the window from detection to removal greatly. The quicker the piracy detection, the less time the stream will have to generate audiences, which in turn will decrease advertising income for the pirates and mitigate the damages inflicted on legal broadcasters.

According to LaLiga President Javier Tebas, the league managed to reduce piracy of its Spanish streams by 60% throughout the season of 2024/25 as a result of the combination of legal, educational and technical activities, which included entering into a partnership with Fastly.

However, LaLiga is far from being the only club that decided to fight online piracy of sporting events recently. Rights-holders across Europe are revising their approaches due to changing viewing patterns and the availability of new technologies. In the UK alone, around four million people use unauthorised means to view live broadcasts.