Credit: Insider Sport
The fight against illegal streaming has become one of the most pressing issues in European football, and Italy’s Serie A is taking a proactive stance. A year into its partnership with Sportian, the sports division of technology firm Globant, the league has reported that its Piracy Guard system blocked more than 4,500 piracy attacks per matchweek during the 2024/25 season.
AI Meets Human Oversight
Piracy Guard combines artificial intelligence with human expertise to detect and shut down illegal broadcasts in real time. The system scans across social media platforms, unlicensed websites, and other digital networks to identify unauthorized streams before removing them.
The project has been reinforced through partnerships with Meta (Facebook and WhatsApp), TikTok, and YouTube, enabling direct removal of infringing content at scale.
“Serie A offers some of the most exciting entertainment in sports, and attempts to steal its IP have been significant,” explained Pablo lo Giudice, Product Manager for Piracy Guard at Sportian. “Italian football gave the world catenaccio – a system of world-class defense – and we’re bringing that same defensive energy to protect the league from piracy.”
Protecting Broadcast Revenue
Broadcast rights remain the lifeblood of European football. According to SportBusiness, global sports broadcast rights reached a total valuation of $60 billion in 2024. The figures for Europe’s top five leagues illustrate just how central these deals are to club finances:
- Premier League: $9bn (four-year deal)
- La Liga: $5.7bn
- Bundesliga: $5.6bn
- Serie A: $5.2bn
- Ligue 1: shifted to a direct-to-consumer model with Ligue 1+
Despite progress, piracy remains costly. Serie A CEO Luigi De Siervo revealed the league lost approximately $345m in revenue last season alone due to illegal streaming, with a direct knock-on effect on youth academies and grassroots football. The financial hit, he warned, risks stalling Italy’s long-term player development pipeline.
A Europe-Wide Challenge
Italy is not alone. Across Europe, the piracy crisis continues to escalate:
- La Liga: Reports annual losses of €600–700m due to piracy. After adopting AI-based detection and participating in Operation Kratos, the Spanish league claims to have reduced piracy in Spain by 60%.
- Ligue 1: Launched Ligue 1+, a direct-to-consumer streaming service, after broadcast negotiations collapsed with DAZN—partly due to the prevalence of illegal streams.
- Premier League: Sky Sports Managing Director Jonathan Licht recently called piracy a “real concern,” warning it has become dangerously normalized and risks undermining subscriptions.
The Road Ahead
While AI-driven systems like Piracy Guard mark an important step forward, football’s piracy problem requires wider collaboration between leagues, broadcasters, and technology platforms. Without collective action, the revenue drain will continue to pose a long-term threat to both elite and grassroots football.
As Luisella Fusco, Media Operations & Broadcast Director at Serie A, noted:
“Piracy remains one of the greatest threats to the sustainability of football, and we consider it our responsibility to lead the fightback and protect our sport for future generations.”
With Serie A and La Liga already adopting AI solutions, the real question now is: how long before Europe’s leagues align on a shared strategy to defend their most valuable asset—broadcast rights?
Source: Insider Sport
Read the Original Insider Sport Article
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