Like many other major football (or rugby) leagues in Europe, La Liga is plagued by rampant piracy issues. Now, the group has proposed a harsh solution to this long-standing problem, requiring Google to proactively and directly delete the app from users' phones.
La Liga wants downloaded apps removed from Android smartphones and wants Google to carry out the action. The bizarre proposal comes from Javier Tebas, the president of Spain's top men's professional football organization. Tebas said that just days into the new football season, La Liga has helped "eliminate" 58 Android users using illegal streaming football match apps.
Tebas recently attended an event with Víctor Francos Díaz, Spain’s Secretary of State for Sport and President of the Superior Council for Sport (CSD), and Iban García del Blanco, Member of the European Parliament. At an event focused on combating sports piracy, Dias said piracy rates in Europe increased by 3.3% in 2022. La Liga and other major European leagues are particularly affected by this problem, with users mostly "illegally" watching pirated matches through unauthorized IPTV streaming services.
According to data provided by Tebas, the above-mentioned 58 pirated applications have been downloaded by 4 million users worldwide. There have been approximately 1.1 million downloads in Spain, with the majority of users (800,000) using Android phones. Tebas said that after eight years of anti-piracy efforts, La Liga has now reliably detected more than 46,000 IP addresses broadcasting pirated live sports events around the world.
Tebas did not elaborate on how La Liga "eliminates" the 58 pirated apps targeted in the first few days of the new season, but it is likely that these apps were simply removed from the official Google App Store. The head of La Liga has proposed tougher anti-piracy measures that go far beyond a few tweaks to the Play Store.
The organization said it was "in discussions with Google" and other platforms about implementing the new measures. Tebas said Mountain View must "eliminate" downloaded apps on Android smartphones. Tebas said that if this can be done for "crimes such as child pornography", then it can certainly be done for "theft" of intellectual property.
Tebas's claims are at least debatable because they imply that child pornography and intellectual property piracy are (or should be) the same thing before the law. Furthermore, if La Liga asks Google to remove installed apps, it's likely that those apps will still rely on a well-functioning IPTV streaming infrastructure that the organization has been unable to handle to date.