Spain’s Guardia Civil police have shut down the country’s biggest illegal streaming platform, Cristal Azul, which had been offering La Liga and second division football matches online for free.
Cristal Azul offered free streaming of the football matches to some 78,000 users from all over the world, mainly Spanish-speaking.
The site was accessed via links on Telegram, and caused economic damage of more than €42 million for the companies that own the rights to the Spanish divisions, according to the police.
At the start of October, the Guardia Civil’s technological investigation unit, after months of work, managed to ‘block and eliminate all the Telegram channels’ where the matches were accessed, in addition to having erased the ‘programming code used illegitimately’.
On 9 October, the administrator of Cristal Azul had announced the channel was closing ‘immediately and forever, as things have become very ugly’. By then, the suspect had already been questioned by the police.
Users of the illegal platform had linked the closure of the channel to the arrest of Telegram’s owner and CEO Pavel Durov in France on 24 August. After his release, Durov promised to be much tougher on piracy Telegram and said he would collaborate with authorities to get to the ringleaders of these networks.
‘More than 78,000 community members … were benefiting from the broadcasting, defrauding two well-known Spanish companies of more than €42 million,’ the Guardia Civil posted on X, formerly Twitter (see below).
The operation began following a complaint filed jointly by La Liga and broadcaster Movistar, and finished with the identification of the alleged perpetrator, a 37-year-old man, now under investigation.
The operation is a victory for La Liga president Javier Tebas in his battle with illegal streaming, which he considers to be ‘theft’ that could drive football ‘into bankruptcy’.
#OperacionesGC I Desactivado el canal de streaming pirata más importante en #España
— Guardia Civil (@guardiacivil) November 15, 2024
➡️Se ha conseguido investigar al desarrollador del software en el cual se retransmitían en directo partidos de fútbol.
➡️Más de 78.000 miembros de la comunidad de diferentes canales de una… pic.twitter.com/X9XWPjLNp1
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