The non-profit Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG) and ad supply chain partners de-monetized 1,376 illegal World Cup streaming and content sites; reinforcing the “Operation Offsides” domain takedown announced by US DoJ on June 26.
In addition to the newly demonetized domains, TAG also identified an additional 176 domains trafficking in stolen World Cup that had already been on TAG’s Pirate Domain Exclusion List (PDEL).
TAG compiles the list through contributions from industry partners and members of the TAG AdSec Threat Exchange, the leading forum for sharing advertising-related threat intelligence. TAG has shared the sites through its PDEL with key intermediaries across the digital advertising supply chain to prevent ad dollars from reaching those illegitimate sites.
TAG’s PDEL provides advertisers, agencies, and ad tech platforms with a regularly updated catalog of known piracy domains, enabling them to decide whether to automatically exclude those sites from programmatic advertising campaigns. The list is one of TAG’s most widely used anti-piracy tools and a core component of the organization’s broader effort to ensure that advertising investment flows only to legitimate, brand-appropriate content environments.
TAG is a non-profit created by the global advertising industry to fight ad-related criminal activity and address other supply chain challenges
Why it matters
“Global sporting events like the World Cup are prime targets for criminals who try to intercept legitimate ad dollars by stealing popular streaming content,” said Rachel Nyswander Thomas, Chief Operating Officer of TAG. “The TAG AdSec Threat Exchange has created as an early-warning system to identify and block ad revenue to websites that are profiting from stolen content, and this first-of-its-kind initiative allows us to fight those criminals in near-real time by cutting off the flow of ad dollars to the content thieves targeting the World Cup.”
Further reading
TAG launches first of its kind initiative to cut off pirate ad revenue from stolen FIFA World Cup streams. Press release. June 30, 2026. Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG)
