By Diego Dabrio, Senior Content Protection Expert at UEFA
Piracy moves fast, adapts quickly and is ever more organised. In response, UEFA has recently bolstered its enforcement programme, via its membership of ACE, to enhance its deep online monitoring and intelligence activities with on-the-ground investigations and targeted action against large‑scale piracy operations. Coordinated with UC3, this holistic programme is designed to address organised piracy both online and in real life and thereby strengthen protection for broadcast partners.
These activities complement each other; intelligence generated through online monitoring helps support investigations into organised piracy by enabling the identification of operators, the mapping of networks and the disruption of underlying services. This approach has already delivered tangible results across multiple jurisdictions. One recent illustration can be seen in Latin America, where action by ACE resulted in the shutdown of key FlujoTV IPTV domains and associated infrastructure, substantially disrupting a piracy service operated from Ecuador with hundreds of thousands of users worldwide. Similar investigations and operations are under way across a growing number of key territories, with further measures already in the pipeline.
UEFA also continues to build out its online enforcement activity, as seen by the success of the dynamic blocking order it recently obtained in India. This has had a significant effect on illegal streaming websites reaching millions of users and is being continually evolved and improved to maximise its efficacy through high‑impact online disruption.
UEFA will not cease to look at different approaches to content protection. Impacting and disrupting the piracy ecosystem in every meaningful way is at the heart of our mission to protect the interests of our broadcast partner family. Working with ACE has very much enhanced our anti-piracy capabilities, reinforcing the combination of effective online disruption with targeted on‑the‑ground enforcement across territories worldwide.
