LALIGA HAS ANNOUNCED a partnership with cloud computing platform Fastly to build AI-driven, real-time technical solutions that identify and help remove illegal live sports streams, aiming to protect LaLiga’s match broadcasts and broader media rights.
With LaLiga estimating that piracy costs its clubs between $700-$800 million (€600-€700m) each year, the two are collaborating on a joint anti-piracy innovation project with the dual goals of helping platforms combat piracy and enabling rights holders like LaLiga to preserve the strategic and economic value of their copyrighted content by mitigating illegal use.
Per a media release, Fastly and LaLiga began collaborating last year, “motivated by the scale of illegal streaming of live sports, with numerous unauthorised streaming sites active on each match day”.
“To help LaLiga combat this content theft, Fastly has developed a targeted, intelligent detection system that leverages AI and proprietary content signals to identify illegal streams in real time,” the release continues.
A 2025 study by Grant Thornton revealed that at least 10.8 million unauthorised retransmissions of live events were detected in 2024, over 81% of these retransmissions were never suspended, and only 2.7% were addressed within the first 30 minutes of the event.
Fastly’s solution is designed to address these challenges by enabling the removal of illegal content by its platform customers with enhanced precision and dramatically reduces the window of opportunity for piracy.
“At LaLiga, we have succeeded in reducing piracy of our streams in Spain by 60% during the 2024/25 season through a comprehensive, end-to-end strategy focused on legal, educational, institutional, and technological measures,” LaLiga president Javier Tebas is quoted as having said in the release. “This success is due in large part to our ecosystem of partners like Fastly, enabling us to continue exploring new and more effective ways to tackle piracy at its root. LaLiga remains firmly committed to putting an end to piracy, and achieving this goal requires the collaboration of all stakeholders working together.”
LaLiga and Fastly’s joint initiative comes as part of their wider efforts that allow media and publishing companies to flag confirmed pirated content and segments. Fastly and LaLiga are actively collaborating with other technology companies, publishers, and regulators to develop software solutions and best practices that quickly detect and disable unauthorised streaming while leaving all other traffic untouched.
“Unlike alternative approaches based on regional blocking, our strategy focuses on precision, letting fans enjoy the game while protecting content from abuse by criminals,” the release quotes Fastly chief product officer Kelly Shortridge as having said. “At Fastly, we love co-innovating with customers to solve their thorniest challenges, and we look forward to continuing our work with LALIGA to help protect content owners around the world.”
