What a thrilling time for soccer fans everywhere. For the past six weeks, the World Cup saw people from Buenos Aires to Barcelona, to Brisbane and beyond, gather around televisions and tablets, cheer on their heroes, live and die with each corner kick and set play, and wonder who would emerge as champions of the beautiful game.
Yet far from the pitch, another team has waged a different kind of battle, situated not on the field of play but in dark corners of the internet: a fight to prevent criminal pirates from stealing live game broadcasts, illegally distributing them online, and threatening the integrity of the sport and the safety of viewers everywhere.
The World Cup is the kind of event fans live for. But in digital spaces without referees, it’s also the type of event that criminal pirates thrive on and exploit. What the rest of us see as a reason to root for our national squads, these perpetrators see as an opportunity to undermine legitimate viewing options and expose audiences to data theft, hacking, or cyber risks.
That’s where “Operation Offsides” came into play – a massive, worldwide campaign to detect, deter, and dismantle these vast criminal networks.
This effort identified and disrupted the operators, infrastructure, and services behind illegal streamers, tapping into the combined expertise and leadership of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) – the world’s leading anti-piracy coalition – alongside the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination (IPR) Center; the Department of Justice; and other domestic and international partners,
The IPR Center helped facilitate and lead real-time coordination to combat piracy sites across rightsholders, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies. Meanwhile, ACE combined insights from our global coalition, technical analysis, and investigations across jurisdictions to inform and strengthen this anti-piracy campaign.
Together, we acted swiftly and decisively to ensure that fans could watch the matches safely.
We scored a series of victories: from the start of the tournament through the final, officials seized over 1,000 websites and blocked nearly 2,000 domains that unlawfully stole and shared FIFA World Cup matches. These sites aren’t small-time players: in fact, in July alone, they racked up north of 156 million visits prior to their seizures.
Digital piracy is a serious crime with real consequences. By steering audiences away from authorized broadcasts, these illegal platforms upend the value of legitimate media rights, all to turn a profit through ads, subscriptions, malware, and other avenues.
What’s more, piracy is increasingly becoming a high-risk pathway for consumers. Users of piracy sites face greater exposure to phishing, fraud, personal identity theft, and other digital threats. Coordinated campaigns like “Operation Offsides” are designed to turn that danger on its head – to protect people’s sensitive information and direct them to legitimate streaming sources.
That’s a true win-win for the futbol faithful worldwide.
If we’ve learned anything from “Operation Offsides,” it’s that this battle against piracy never stops.
Live sports piracy happens as the clock ticks down on a match or series. But there are no hydration breaks to catch our breath nor is there stoppage time to score a winning goal and save the day.
The World Cup is one venue for this fight. All live events are, unfortunately, ripe for piracy. The World Series, the Super Bowl, Premier League face-offs, the Stanley Cup finals, the Olympics, and on and on. They face the same dangers.
And for live sports, these risks are unique – and existential. A live broadcast loses most of its commercial value once a game ends; indeed, hardly anyone watches a game if they already know who won. And when sports are viewed illegally, that delivers a blow to the global sports industry, to the tune of a $28.3 billion loss each year.
That’s why live sports piracy must be treated for what it is: organized, cross-border crime that cannot be addressed by one-off operations or individual law enforcement actions. A takedown is essential, and it can interrupt access for a moment. But it does not dismantle the business behind it.
“Operation Offsides” is one critical step forward in a sustained game plan that targets operators, infrastructure, devices, payment platforms, and more. We succeeded in defending the integrity of the World Cup, but pirates are already moving on to the next valuable live event. The work to combat this criminal activity happens long before the opening whistle and long after the final play. Our vigilance and resilience cannot waver.
We need every tool at our disposal to fortify our anti-piracy work. That begins with public-private coalitions like the one built around the World Cup. But it takes smart policies too. Chief among them would be judicial site blocking in the U.S. – a targeted legal tactic used in nearly 60 countries, including leading democracies and key allies, to reduce traffic on illegal sites and keep viewers on legitimate platforms to catch their favorite teams, films, or shows.
Leagues, broadcasters, law enforcement, policymakers, rightsholders, entertainment companies, and others have a rooting interest in what must be a round-the-clock cause to counter criminal piracy.
We have to keep identifying piracy networks and act to stop them. We have to serve as the offense, midfield, defense, and goalie all at once. Sometimes, the referees too.
We have to stay laser-focused on our common objective: ensuring fans can watch, cheer, and invest themselves in each match, knowing that dedicated professionals are keeping them safe and protecting the games we love.
Charles Rivkin is Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association and Chairman of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment. Ivan Arvelo is Director of the United States National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center.
