Fastly + LALIGA Turn Anti-Piracy Into a Real-Time Edge Race
Fastly and LALIGA announced a joint anti-piracy innovation effort to detect and help remove illegal live streams of LALIGA matches, citing LALIGA estimates that piracy costs its clubs $700–$800 million annually. Fastly says it has built a real-time detection system using AI and proprietary content signals to identify unauthorized streams and enable more precise takedowns without broad regional blocking. The release references industry data (Grant Thornton) indicating 10.8 million unauthorized live-event retransmissions were detected in 2024, with most not suspended and only 2.7% addressed within the first 30 minutes.
Key Takeaways
- Fastly built an AI-driven, real-time piracy detection system focused on identifying unauthorized live match streams with proprietary content signals.
- LALIGA estimates piracy costs its clubs $700–$800M per year and says it reduced piracy in Spain by 60% in the 2024/25 season via an end-to-end strategy.
- Grant Thornton data cited: 10.8M unauthorized live-event retransmissions detected in 2024; 81% were never suspended and only 2.7% were addressed within the first 30 minutes.
- Fastly positions the solution as “precision” enforcement—narrow takedowns vs broad ISP/regional blocks—reducing collateral damage for legitimate fans.
- The partnership signals tighter coupling between rights-holders and infrastructure vendors, with anti-piracy moving closer to CDN/edge control planes.
Why It Matters
Live-sports piracy is increasingly a latency problem: if you can’t act in the first minutes, the audience is already gone. Fastly and LALIGA are betting that enforcement belongs at the edge—where content signals, routing, and real-time observability can enable fast, targeted disruption without nuking whole regions (and triggering PR, regulator, and customer blowback). For streamers, leagues, and CDNs, this is the emerging “anti-piracy stack” arms race: detection + precision action as a product feature, not a legal afterthought. Expect more rights deals to bundle infrastructure, security, and enforcement into one contract.
Read full article at fastly.com
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