The fight against the hacking of football in France has just experienced a major turning point. The LFP announces that it has found an effective solution to counter illegal flows and limit access to clandestine retransmissions. An advance that may well change the situation.
A significant advance against hacking
The Professional Football League obtained several orders from the Paris judicial court on January 16, strengthening its arsenal against the hacking of Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 meetings. This new measure directly targets search engines like Google and Bing, as that the alternative DNS services used to bypass the restrictions imposed by Internet Access providers (FAI). By combining the dereferencing of pirate sites and blocking access via these DNS services, the LFP hopes to considerably reduce the illegal broadcast of professional football matches.
Telegram and IPTV in the viewfinder
This initiative intervenes in a context where illegal IPTV and TELEGRAM broadcasts have gained unprecedented scale. Faced with subscriptions deemed excessive by many football enthusiasts, these pirate solutions have attracted hundreds of thousands of spectators. During the opening match of the Ligue 1 season, more than 200,000 people were connected to illegal flows on Telegram, and nearly 800,000 watched the meeting via a Brazilian Youtube page broadcasting Dazn.
Labrune and the LFP finally countered the hacking?
A colossal shortfall for broadcasters
Piracy constitutes significant financial damage for broadcasters like Dazn and BeIN Sports. With an objective of reaching 1.5 million subscribers to ensure the viability of his contract with the LFP, Dazn sees this explosion of illegal streaming with a very bad eye. The study carried out by the League last November revealed that 55 % of the spectators of the OM-PSG poster had opted for illegal dissemination rather than a legal solution, an unacceptable situation for the beneficiaries.
What sanctions for spectators?
If spectators of pirate content can, in theory, be prosecuted for concealment of counterfeiting and risks up to 5 years in prison and 375,000 euros fine, the reality is very different. The majority of offenders simply receive a warning, and in the event of a recurrence, fines of 90 to 1,000 euros are applied. However, the authorities are mainly focused on suppliers of these illegal services, with more than 1,500 domain names blocked in recent months.
A final solution?
Despite these advances, hacking remains a complex problem. Telegram, for example, does not always cooperate with requests for deletion in real time, leaving a legal vacuum that the LFP hopes to fill with more strict European legislation. Until then, the war against illegal broadcasts continues, with the hope that these new measures will finally bring a fatal blow to a scourge that undermines the professional football industry.
