The Serie A football league, together with rights holders Sky and DAZN, have worked with Italy’s financial law enforcement agency Guardia di Finanza (GdF), the Italian communications regulator AGCOM, and the Public Proscecutor’s office of Lecce toward a new milestone, announced in May. Now, both illegal distributors and their consumers are subject to financial penalties.
According to the Commander of Special goods and Services Unit of the GdF, “… 183 Territorial Units of the GdF sanctioned 2,266 infringing users in 80 Italian provinces,” with additional offenses to be identified.
For the first time, end users that are detected accessing piracy streaming sites were given first fines of €154 euros each under Italy’s anti-piracy laws. These offenders are placed on a “black list.” Subsequent offenses lead to increased financial penalties and can further lead toward criminal proceedings in court.
Commercial pirates that re-distribute pirated sports content could face fines of of up to €1,000 and up to 3 years jail time.
‘This is a regulation that can be applied to bring about the effects that everyone is waiting for. From today on there is zero tolerance from the institutions and politics. We have created a rule that we hope will produce results, I think today we have arrived at a system that solves all the problems,’ said Claudio Lotito, Forza Italia senator and rapporteur of the anti-piracy rule; and reported by Il Sole 24 Ora, an Italian news journal.
The legal framework was passed into law in July 2023 and went into effect that August, administered by Italy’s communications regulator AGCOM. It also requires ISPs to terminate access to pirate streams within 30 minutes of notification by blocking domain name resolution and blocking network traffic with identified IP addresses, using automated technical countermeasures. Its scope has been expanded to VPNs, DNS and search de-indexing.
Further reading
Piracy, the axe on end users: first 2,266 fines imposed. Article. by Andrea Biondi. May 14, 2025. Il Sole 24 Ore.
Marotta: “Piracy, it’s time to say enough. The law serves to rebalance the revenues of a movement that is always in difficulty.” Article. by Mattia Zangari. May 14, 2025. Internews.it
Italy: Site blocking becomes law, goes into effect August 8. Article. July 28, 2023. by Steven Hawley. Piracy Monitor
Why it matters
These revelations were made at a press conference about sports piracy at the headquarters of the Italian National Olympic Committee in Rome.
“Piracy has represented and certainly represents great damage for the football movement, it’s time to say enough,” said Giuseppe Marotta, president of FC Internazionale Milano. Using a football metaphor to make his point, he exclaimed “If before it was a yellow card, now it’s a red card. It’s time to rebalance the revenues of a system that’s constantly struggling.”
