ACE is thrilled to welcome Guillermo Rodriguez as our new Director of Live Content Protection. With a career that bridges live sports and digital enforcement, Guillermo joins ACE at a pivotal moment as live sports piracy rapidly evolves into one of the world’s most sophisticated forms or organized cybercrime. Read on to learn his thoughts about sports piracy’s impact on the industry, and how urgency, precision, and operational efficiency will serve as his guiding principles.
Tell us about your background.
I’ve built my career at the intersection of business, technology, digital content protection, and operational innovation.
In January 2021, I joined LaLiga as Director of Anti-Fraud Operations, where I led global anti-piracy and anti-fraud strategies to protect the rights of content owners and broadcasters. While there, I strengthened LaLiga’s content protection strategy and helped position the organization as a key player in the global fight against digital piracy.
Before LaLiga, I held senior positions at Smart Protection, where I played a key role in expanding digital security solutions globally.
Although my academic background is in business, my passion is technology. From an early age I enjoyed building and customizing my own computers and gaming consoles. I’ve always been driven to understand how systems work and how to secure them.
What excites you the most about your new role?
ACE brings together unmatched global reach and operational capability – from major studios and sports leagues to law enforcement to technology partners. What excites me is the opportunity to bring value to the organization, its members, and the wider industry by protecting intellectual property and dismantling the criminal infrastructure behind live sports piracy. I am deeply motivated by the challenge of safeguarding creativity, innovation, and fair competition across the audiovisual industry.
I am particularly inspired by projects where strategic decisions and coordinated efforts lead to measurable results. I’m excited to see how our work directly reduces piracy, protects creative value, and strengthens the overall industry.
And I’m excited to be collaborating once again with long-time partners like UEFA, DAZN, beIN, SKY, and many others in our ongoing fight against piracy, defending their interests and protecting premium content.
How will you leverage your experience at LaLiga in your new responsibilities?
Working at LaLiga managing live sports, where most of the revenue depends on real-time event consumption, taught me the critical importance of acting within minutes to mitigate and eliminate any impact on asset value. This experience instilled in me a strong sense of urgency, precision, and operational efficiency, which I intend to apply fully in my new role to deliver rapid, coordinated, and effective responses to live content infringements affecting our members. My goal is to enhance and expand intelligence sharing through integration of vendor data and to refine the workflows that connect ACE’s global network.
In your opinion, how does live sports piracy affect the sports industry?
Piracy isn’t just copyright theft affecting the sports industry—it’s a cybercrime threat that damages the entire audiovisual ecosystem. Fake streaming sites expose users to cyber threats including malware, fraud, and identity theft. Live sports piracy on the scale of piracy ring StreamEast—which was taken down by ACE and had 1.6 billion annual visits—uses mirrored domains and encrypted CDNs, monetizing through ads, subscriptions, and ties to illegal gambling.
This commercially scaled piracy also creates unfair competition that directly undermines the ability of companies to invest, develop, and promote audiovisual content. It impacts innovation, job creation, and public services. Piracy is one of the main threats to the sustainability of the industry, and we must take decisive actions against it.
What do you hope to accomplish in your first 6 months at ACE?
My main goal is to understand the key challenges, pain points, and primary threats our members face in protecting live content. Based on that understanding, I aim to provide them with practical tools and actionable plans that enhance their daily operations and allow us to implement concrete measures to address live content infringements, where every minute truly counts.
Every illegal stream represents more than lost revenue. It represents risk to consumers, erosion of creative value, and funding for organized cybercrime. ACE is leveraging global partnerships and a coalition of more than 50 members to fight piracy at its source. I’m proud to be part of that solution.
