In a report by El Español, LaLiga used the signatures of three piracy inspectors on 1,352 piracy incident reports across Spain, which were said to have been used by courts across the country against bars and restaurants accused of showing LaLiga matches without licenses.
Those inspectors say they never signed the documents, and that they never carried out the inspections; which raises the possibility of “judicial use of false documents and procedural fraud,” said El Español. In reality, just 73 of the inspections were actually carried out.
To lend credence to the false reports, the national coordinator for verification asked the three inspectors to capture her hand-written signature on a blank sheet, with her ID number. In a subseuent meeting, the director of LaLiga’s HORECA (Hoteles, Restaurantes y Cafés) department asked the three inspectors to apply their own signatures to blank paper.
El Español claims to have physical evidence of the situation.
Paid inspections
In another LaLiga-associated tie-in with piracy, El Español reported in July 2026 that a LaLiga supplier “paid €100 per statement to his workers so that they could testify to the trials against piracy in bars.” LaLiga required that the paid inspectors record the time and date of the claimed infringement and take a photo. This led LaLiga to initiate more than 2,000 court procedings, according to El Español.
Ghost pirates?
In 2025, a Barcelona court heard a case accusing a bar owner of presenting a LaLiga match. In reality, the detective had the wrong address and the illegal broadcast occurred at a different time than was claimed by the observer. A photo showed a TV set that was a different brand than the one actually in the accused establishment. This prompted the judge to have “serious doubts about the authorship of the authorship and the commission of the infraction that is attributed to the accused,” and acquitted the defendant.
Why it matters
Any tie-ins between these incidents can only be subject to speculation. But if any area of intellectual property crime should be free of fraud in quest of the facts, it should be piracy.
Further reading
The League forged the signatures of three detectives in 1,352 reports against bars that it accuses of hacking the football broadcast. Article. November 5, 2026. by Brais Cedeira and Antonio Blanco. El Español (Newspaper, Spain)
A LaLiga supplier paid his workers for testifying in trials against piracy in bars: €100 per statement. Article. July 14, 2026. by Antonio Blanco. El Español (Newspaper, Spain)
LaLig paid detectives prepared false reports against a bar that they accused of broadcasting pirate football. Article. April 6, 2025. by Brais Cedeira. El Español (Newspaper, Spain)
