In a speech at the Forum of Europe this Monday in Madrid, the president of the Spanish league, Javier Tebas, warned of the serious problem that piracy poses for football and revealed that in Spain, according to a latest European report, 40% of the population pirates: “In the last two years, Spanish clubs have given 200 million euros to the CSD to distribute among athletes and elite events. If we don’t solve this problem, this income would be cut in half, there would be a reduction in salaries. In Europe, there are more than 50,000 players and more than 2,000 clubs are affected. Many actors are involved in piracy. Big tech companies need to step in and stop collaborating with piracy because they are making money.“.
He also announced that the Spanish employers’ association had filed criminal complaints against Google in Spain, Ecuador, Brazil and France, similar to those it won in Argentina. In this sense, he detailed that in August 2023, they reported 140 pirated applications to Google, which were removed from the Play Store but kept on phones: “15 days after these complaints, in Spain alone there have been 800,000 pirated downloads on Android. In Argentina we have won and what justice demands is to remove them from mobile phones” he added.
