Participants at the EXTRATIME industry forum conducted in Singapore by La Liga, the international football league based in Spain; concluded that audiovisual fraud is the biggest threat to the future of the football industry. In Spain alone, La Liga clubs lose between 600 and 700 million euros per year, according to data presented by its president Javier Tebas at the event.
But the fight against it is producing results. Mr Tebas noted that by implementing AI technology to monitor registration patterns, tracking suspicious traffic behavior and by increasing the capacity of teams working to detect fraud, piracy has been reduced by as much as 60% in Spain.
In addition, La Liga reinforced its legal work, implemented dynamic IP blocking, and created a specialised unit with multidisciplinary professionals who work intensively in this area.
Technological tools
Participants in the event’s technology panel highlighted La Liga’s role as a technology driver in sport globally, as the first football league to launch an Artificial Intelligence department. La Liga also has partnerships with innovation powerhouses Sportian and Microsoft.
Microsoft’s GSIC (Global Sport Innovation Center), based in Singapore, participated in the panel highlighting joint projects with La Liga such as Beyond Stats, which aims to bring data closer to the fans through television broadcasts or the digital environment.
The data is extracted from Mediacoach, La Liga’s own tool that collects and processes more than 3.5 million data during each match of the competition thanks to the 16 optical tracking cameras installed in each stadium. Atlético de Madrid also participated by explaining its technological strategy via videoconference.
Tangible results
La Liga participated in 2024 in Operation Kratos, led by Europol, which succeeded in dismantling a network of 22 million users in Europe. In this operation, weapons and drugs were also seized in searches. Legal milestones have also been achieved, such as the landmark ruling that allowed La Liga to carry out dynamic IP blocking. In addition, La Liga has strengthened its cooperation with responsible intermediaries such as Meta, YouTube or TikTok in recent seasons.
About the event
La Liga Extratime is La Liga’s own event, which, according to La Liga, has become a benchmark for the international sports industry and is held in La Liga’s strategic markets.
This edition, presented by John Dykes, featured, in addition to the fight against audiovisual fraud, two other panels dedicated to strategic issues such as Technology and Fan Engagement. Javier Tebas opened the event with a speech that emphasised the importance of the fight against audiovisual fraud, followed by a panel where Louis Boswell (AVIA) debated the problems of this scourge together with representatives of La Liga and BeIN Sports.
Further reading
Javier Tebas, president of LALIGA, denounces the threat of audiovisual fraud to the future of the industry in LALIGA EXTRATIME Singapore. Press release. June 23, 2025. La Liga
Why it matters
“Fighting audiovisual fraud has a high cost for La Liga, but we choose to lead, because the cost of not doing so is much higher,” said La Liga president Javier Tebas.
The global scale of the problem, as highlighted in the panel on this topic at the event, is enormous: according to a report by the Live Content Coalition (LCC), 10.8 million illegal sports broadcasts were detected in Europe alone in 2024. In the football industry, experts said, the consequences for clubs are enormous, as they force them to make short-term decisions in the face of uncertainty: reducing sporting or infrastructure investments, or delaying internationalisation projects.
“We are facing highly organised criminal networks that cause unimaginable damage across the economy. The scale of the challenge means that there must be total commitment at the institutional level and between companies, both in the sports industry and technology. This fight is global and collaborative, and we must also act by denouncing the inactivity of some intermediaries, who are allowing criminal content to be shared through their infrastructures,” said Mr Tebas.
