DOJ seizes 400 piracy domains in World Cup anti-piracy sweep

The fivefold increase in seized domains compared to the 2022 World Cup signals both escalating piracy infrastructure and more aggressive enforcement, with the US as a host nation providing stronger jurisdictional footing. For streaming rights holders — NBCUniversal, Warner Bros., and beIN among them — this coordinated public-private model demonstrates how live sports exclusivity can be defended when rights holders actively feed intelligence to federal agencies. Watch whether seized domains' traffic resurfaces on replacement infrastructure, as TorrentFreak's analysis of the 2022 seizures showed operators quickly deploying backup domains within days.

Per TorrentFreak (December 2022), the prior iteration of Operation Offsides during the Qatar World Cup seized approximately 78 domains, with nearly 69% registered through US-based registrars. TorrentFreak's analysis noted that seized sites collectively attracted hundreds of millions of monthly visits and that operators rapidly deployed backup domains after takedowns — a pattern that likely explains the current operation's larger simultaneous seizure footprint.

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), which supported the DOJ action, has escalated its own enforcement pace. Per ACE (June 24, 2026), the coalition partnered with UEFA and Mexican authorities to disrupt a PirloTV-linked sports piracy ring across 44 domains generating 950 million annual visits. Per ACE (January 29, 2026), the coalition backed Italy-led "Operation Switch Off," which dismantled illegal IPTV infrastructure serving millions of users across 14 countries and disconnected 125,000+ end users in Italy alone.

Per Tom's Hardware (June 2026), the 2026 tournament's North American hosting arrangement across the US, Canada, and Mexico gives federal agencies stronger jurisdictional leverage than was available during the 2022 Qatar tournament, where enforcement was limited to domain-level takedowns without direct cross-border infrastructure access. The targeting of servers in Peru and Bulgaria suggests DOJ is now pursuing upstream infrastructure, not just consumer-facing domains.