A July 2026 report by the European Parliament explains how live-content piracy is no longer a marginal form of infringement, but a structured and economically resilient segment of the piracy ecosystem; particularly in relation to sports broadcasting.
Titled Countering online piracy of sports and broadcast in the EU, the report recommended the establishment of immediate notice-and-takedown mechanisms in each EU member state that is binding upon downstream intermediaries such as DNS resolvers, CDNs and VPN providers. Compliance timeframes should be “commensurate with the specificities of the live context, by setting a maximum time limit, for example 30 minutes (as is the case for Italy’s Piracy Shield).” There should also be metrics for the speed and effectiveness of enforcement interventions.
Key findings
The EU framework for live-content piracy relies on the combined operation of the InfoSoc Directive, IPRED (Directive 2004/48/EC of the European Parliament on the enforcement of intellectual property rights), the EU’s DSA (Digital Services Act) and DSM (Digital Single Market) Directive, rather than on a dedicated harmonized regime. It provides useful legal bases, but it was not designed for the speed and mutability of live retransmissions.
According to the report, unauthorized live streaming does fall within EU copyright protection, yet the existing rules were drafted mainly for on-demand and static uses, not the real-time nature of live broadcasts.
The DSA and Article 17 of the DSM Directive add useful notice-and-action and platform obligations, but they do not create live-content-specific deadlines and still need to be combined with injunctions and cooperation mechanisms to work effectively in real time.
THe EU’s intellectual property directive (IPRED) remains the key enforcement instrument because it allows injunctions against both direct infringers and intermediaries. This has enabled national courts to develop static, dynamic and, in some cases, live blocking orders.
The report also shows that the current EU and national response remains fragmented, with considerable differences in legal remedies, technical implementation and the speed of intervention available to rights holders. In practice, this fragmentation weakens the predictability and consistency of enforcement within the internal market.
Infringements are up, suspensions remain low
Data cited by the report, which was collected throughout 2024 and the first half of 2025, revealed a sharp increase in infringements, with a total of 26.2 million takedown notices submitted to intermediaries in relation to the unauthorised retransmission of live content.
At the same time, intermediary responsiveness remains critically inadequate: only 11% of notices resulted in the suspension of unauthorised retransmissions over the period examined, while the remaining 89% failed to produce any suspension, with performance deteriorating from a 19% suspension rate in the second half of 2024 to just 5% in the first half of 2025.
Unintended collateral damage
In addition, site blocking isn’t necessarily accurate. One example was in Spain, where one report detailed empirical evidence of extensive collateral effects arising from IP-based blocking measures to curb unlawful livestreaming of LALIGA football matches during early 2026.
In several one‐hour intervals, LALIGA’s blocking of only 4 to 20 IP addresses resulted in more than 400,000 domains becoming inaccessible, illustrating the disproportionate reach of IP‐based interventions where shared infrastructure is involved. The report further identifies that these domains are hosted on major content delivery and hosting providers, including Cloudflare, Amazon, Squarespace, Akamai and Microsoft, with a total of 7,441 IP addresses affected across 36 autonomous systems.
The report stressee that the impact concerns not only neutral or purely commercial services, but also websites of public interest, including non‐governmental organisations, media outlets, government portals and messaging platforms.
Recommendations
The report concluded that “While providing instruments for the protection of copyright and the liability of digital intermediaries, (the existing EU legal framework) does not include provisions specifically calibrated to the peculiar nature of live-event piracy, the economic value of which is entirely exhausted within the transmission window.
“Regulation should be ameded to include “an immediate notice-and-takedown mechanism binding upon streaming intermediaries, with compliance timeframes commensurate with the specificities of the live context, by setting a maximum time limit, for example 30 minutes (following the example of the Italian Piracy Shield), within which the unlawful content must be removed.
“(There should be) generalised availability of dynamic and real-time injunctions, capable of tracking the movement of infringing content without requiring the initiation of new proceedings for each new location.” while at the same time, “procedural safeguards designed to prevent the risk of over-removal, including the temporal limitation of measures to the duration of the live event…”
“(The) scope of application (should) extend to the entire chain of intermediaries technically involved in the distribution of unauthorised content – including providers of content delivery networks, VPN services, dedicated servers and DNS resolution systems – as well as, within the limits permitted by the Union’s private international law, to entities established in third countries rendering infringing content accessible within the internal market
“Each EU Member State to establish an independent administrative authority – or, where appropriate, to confer the necessary powers upon an existing one (again on the example of AGCOM) – to ensure consistent oversight, effective enforcement, and regulatory coordination.
“(There) should be underpinned by a significant strengthening of monitoring, data collection mechanisms.” Metrics for measurement of removal rates during live transmission windows, speed of intervention and cross-border enforcement effectiveness should also be established.
Why it matters
The study addresses the spread of live-content piracy in the EU, focusing on unauthorised sports and broadcast streaming via illegal IPTV services and apps. The analysis is focused on the EU legal framework, Commission Recommendation (EU) 2023/1018, national enforcement practices, and technological tools. The study identifies key legal and policy gaps. A set of recommendations is presented, in order to strengthen, harmonise, and accelerate anti-piracy enforcement across the Union.
Anyone seeking data on the nature and extent of online infringement on a country-by-country and EU-wide basis will find it in this report.
An independent assessment released in 2025 found that, as a non-legislative act of encouragement, and not binding law, the European Commission’s recommendation has had little impact on piracy, and that “mitigation efforts are mostly ignored.”
The EU has since received a wealth of input toward improving the EU’s copyright directive, but Copyright advocates including media, enterainment and sports interests want faster response to infringement while Internet companies like Google and Cloudflare decry heavy handedness. AI companies want copyright exceptions.
Further reading
Countering online piracy of sports and broadcast in the EU, Report. July 2026. by Prof. Dr Giovanni Maria Riccio, Professor of Comparative Law, University of Salerno. Policy Department for Justice, Civil Liberties and Institutional Affairs Directorate-General for Citizens’ Rights, Justice and Institutional Affairs PE 783.147. European Parliament
Collateral damage of IP-based blocking during LALIGA football streaming in Spain: Evidence from OONI measurements. June 30, 2026. by Arturo Filastò (OONI), Maria Xynou (OONI), Mehul Gulati (OONI). Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI).
2026 review of EC’s Copyright Directive: Internet, media and AI stakeholders all at odds. Article. July 8, 2026. by Steven Hawley. Piracy Monitor
European Commission’s 2023 antipiracy recommendations have had little effect: Live Content Coalition. Article. March 17, 2025. by Steven Hawley. Piracy Monitor
Commission recommenda actions to combat online piracy of sports and other live events. Report (Landing page). May 3, 2023. European Commission
