The war between soccer and the internet in Spain

Since February in Spain, there is a football war between the national soccer league (La liga) and the internet. In that moment, one of the major internet providers, following orders of La liga, started to block certain IP adresses to block unauthorized streams.

They can do this following a sentence of november 2024, which allow to internet service providers (ISP) to block certain IP  during match time, and only if there is no third parties affected.

However, this method of blocking is not efficient, as most people can continue watching unauthorized streamings easily and is affecting other websites and services that are completely legitimate. Seems that most affected webpages are the ones hosted in Cloudfare, one of the biggest companies of hosting.

The last episode was this weekend when some users reported that they could access gaming platforms, Steam, or SNS  Twitter (X) among hundreds of other small platforms. Seems that it is clear that there are third parties affected, so it is expected that this situation shouldn’t last for a long time.

Also, it is important to note that Movistar has the legal rights to broadcast and, at the same time, is doing this kind of block. Anyway their price for watching soccer during all season are quite expensive, in some cases could reach 100 euros (around 110 USD). Therefore, they have an incentive to be very strict with the streaming sites.

Let’s see how the situation is next season, but this is a direct attack to net neutrality and opens a dangerous path to censorship.

Source and more information (in spanish): bandaancha.eu