Moscow court orders removal of three pirate sites in victory for La Liga

Spanish football league La Liga has won a ruling to remove illegal streams from pirate Russisan websites.

It was announced on Monday that the Moscow City Court had ruled in its favour that three websites –  mou.su, hdtennis.ru and liveball.ru – had all been showing pirated broadcasts of LaLiga Santander matches in Russia during 2020.

It was noted that these three websites were seeing over 1.14 million visits per month.

The piracy activity was monitored by LaLiga’s in-house antipiracy department with assistance from WebKontrol. The complaint was then filed to the Moscow City Court.

In particular, Paragraph 4 Article 1253.1 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation was cited, with the result being the demand of the immediate removal of all La Liga matches from the three websites.

Piracy has significantly impacted professional sports leagues across the world, and La liga has made significant investments in tackling it in partnership with other industry bodies and rights holders.

This Russian case is the latest piracy victory for the league, following successful court battles in a number of countries like Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Denmark, Senegal and Indonesia.

LaLiga’s Audiovisual Director Melcior Soler, said: “Every ruling against piracy is another step towards removing this illegal practice from the industry. Our global team is able to detect cases across the world and successfully pursue legal action, leading the fight against those who are trying to cheat the rights holders, legitimate broadcast partners and fans.”

Sports piracy has also re-entered the spotlight of late with the proposed takeover of Newcastle United by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund being heavily criticised over the Kingdom’s facilitation of pirate operation beoutQ.