“Secret Pirate Site Raids” Set for 20:15 & 21:15 Sunday, Invited Journalists Report

The big football match between Paris Saint-Germain and Marseille should've been extremely difficult to pirate in France on Sunday. With rare direct assistance from French telecoms regulator Arcom, DAZN promised to "pull out all the stops" to block pirate sites. Journalists invited in to witness planning for the "secret commando raids" openly reported the exact times they were scheduled for.

football blockFrom short-tempered exchanges to full-blown public displays of anger, Europe’s top football leagues and their broadcasting partners seem to be less than satisfied with site blocking as a piracy suppressant.

One of the most aggressive site-blocking systems available anywhere on the planet was launched in Italy in 2024. The balance in favor of rightsholders was obvious from day one yet despite having more tools than rightsholders anywhere else, the law supporting the program was tightened up within months. Yet more amendments are expected in the near future.

Spain’s LaLiga also indicates that site blocking measures need to be improved. Blaming Cloudflare for the lack of performance, Spain’s top league retaliated by blocking Cloudflare and its customers; whether the pirate services hiding behind Cloudflare were affected is unknown.

DAZN sparked a crisis in French football last month when it withheld millions of euros in fees owed to French league Ligue 1, which it accused of not doing enough to tackle piracy. DAZN has now paid everything owed; the problem has not gone away.

Preparing For Le Classique

The decades-old rivalry between Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and Olympique de Marseille (OM) is a very big deal in French football. They call it Le Classique and when the two most successful clubs in France meet, few fans want to miss out on the Ligue 1 action. If all went to plan last night, upwards of 50% of fans who watched the first leg of the clash last October will have had their viewing ruined. Or interrupted.

The background appears in an intriguing report published by L’Equipe, which notes that during the fixture last October, 55% of viewers watched the match illegally despite the blocking of 340 pirate domain names to prevent that happening.

The scale of the event makes Le Classique one of a dozen sporting events to receive special attention from French telecoms regulator Arcom. Partnering with broadcasters like DAZN, Arcom takes the opportunity to spread an anti-piracy message. Arcom’s new president, Martin Ajdari, told L’Equipe that 18% of people in France consumed sports from illegal sources in 2024, the same figure reported for 2023.

“[T]his represents a loss of €300 million in one year for the sports ecosystem. And while piracy is generally declining, we are seeing an increase in illicit consumption via IPTV (access to all channels, via a box or an app, for a low-cost subscription),” Ajdari said.

Secret ‘Commando Operation’ Against 100 Pirate Sites

How Arcom and broadcasters like DAZN counter the piracy threat all year round isn’t for public consumption. Yet, in the days before the big game yesterday, L’Equipe was invited in to witness Arcom’s work and DAZN “pulling out all the stops” in a secret operation to protect the biggest match in French football.

“For several days, Arcom has been preparing a new commando operation, secretly scheduling the blocking of around a hundred pirate services around the return match. On Wednesday, at the regulator’s Paris headquarters in the 12th arrondissement [region of Paris], L’Équipe was able to witness its preparations and meet with agents, all of whom wished to remain anonymous,” the publication reported.

The report begins with an interesting angle to a known but not often discussed aspect of blocking live sports. Many pirate sites are tagged for blocking based on the content previously broadcast, not necessarily on what they’re broadcasting when they’re blocked.

L’Equipe noted a request appearing on a screen to block an IPTV service observed showing Premier League content the previous week. The request was sent by Canal+ to assist rival DAZN; through the Association for the Protection of Sports Programs (APPS), agreement had been reached to collectively target the service in question.

“In the fight against piracy, what benefits one benefits the other, given that IPTV offers all channels,” an anonymous agent told L’Equipe.

More Details of the Secret Operation

Details of the secret operation were not exactly in short supply. The plan for Sunday evening was to disable some pirate services 30 minutes before kick-off. When pirates turned to other sites to resume their illegal viewing, they would then run into a second wave of blocking scheduled for 30 minutes after the start of the match.

Arcom’s investment of €200,000 in systems that improve capacity for blocking requests and reduce processing time to 10 minutes, appears to be paying off.

“Since January 1, we have already blocked 1,293 domain names, almost as many as in all of 2023,” an agent revealed. “Before the software arrived last summer, the blocking request was submitted manually by the rights holder, by email. And we filled out a report template in Word.”

That Arcom still has no direct means of tackling piracy on Telegram, despite the detention of its founder last year, is a little surprising.

“Our main objective is to make it as difficult as possible for consumers to access these illegal services, to discourage them,” explained Arcom’s Martin Ajdari. “We are in a cops and robbers situation, with constant innovations to circumvent the law. We know that the rules put in place will never be completely watertight.”

Precise Timing, Exact Strategy

L’Equipe was informed that the secret operation would launch its first wave at 20:15 and its second wave an hour later at 21:15, details that appeared in its report published well in advance of the match on Sunday night. It’s possible that L’Equipe’s paywall was seen as a no-go-zone for pirates, to the extent that the details wouldn’t leak out and allow pirates to prepare. In theory, perhaps.

If the details on timing were indeed true, the decision to block 30 minutes before the match started seems curious. Regardless of the strategy ‘leaked’ in the article, that would’ve given everyone 30 mins to find one or more replacement streams without missing a second of the match. The second wave of blocking would then cause only half the irritation it could’ve done, losing out on the opportunity to double the impact of Arcom’s anti-piracy message.

An alternative theory is that those details weren’t true and like all good battle plans, misled the enemy and kept everyone guessing until they least expect it. Unfortunately, it’s big match day; everyone expects it.