Soccer and collateral damage: how LaLiga takes down the Omnes website

Every weekend—especially when Real Madrid or FC Barcelona are playing—access to our website is unavailable in Spain through the main Internet providers. This is not a coincidence or simply a spike in traffic: since late 2024, techniques have been activated to cut off illegal broadcasts of matches, which, in practice, are causing “collateral damage” to thousands of legitimate sites. LaLiga, protected by court rulings issued by several commercial courts, has obtained authorization to carry out massive blockages. 

Blocking is activated on days and at times when illegal retransmissions are most likely to occur, i.e., Saturdays and Sundays and, above all, when the big teams are playing. When anti-piracy teams identify IPs that are pirating matches, they order operators to block them. Since many websites (media outlets, stores, services) use the same CDNs or IP addresses, the outages spread and are perceived as widespread “crashes.”.

Criticism

Internet user organizations, digital associations, and some media outlets have denounced the practice for its lack of proportionality and for the risk it poses to rights such as freedom of information. Complaints have been filed with the Ombudsman, and the National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC) has expressed concerns about the impact of these measures. For its part, LaLiga argues that its interventions are legally justified and seek to protect the audiovisual market. 

A platform has been created for affected pages and every week there is dozens of news items reporting the matter.

The substantive debate

The debate is not just technical: it raises questions about proportionality, who decides and with what guarantees when global infrastructure can be shut down for private and judicial reasons, and about the need for mechanisms that allow piracy to be tackled without jeopardizing public services, businesses, and freedom of information. 

Internet user associations warn of the danger of normalizing mass blocking at the request of private interests; LaLiga, on the other hand, calls for effective tools to defend rights for which hundreds of millions are paid.

Humorous note 

Faced with this ordeal of Sunday blackouts, at Omnes we have decided that if LaLiga wants to play at being the Grand Inquisitor of the internet, we will start our own digital reconquest. We have officially launched a crowdfunding campaign of biblical proportions with a clear objective: to achieve the miracle of multiplying euros to exceed Tebas‘ income statement, acquire exclusive rights, and replace soccer with a spiritual fast, where the Golden Boot goes to the one who journeys with the most faith through the desert of ’Error 404“ and IP blocks while waiting for the connection to return. 

Among our proposals to restore the natural order, we plan to replace VAR with the Last Judgment (where there will be no replays, only divine justice), exchange red cards for mandatory acts of contrition in the center circle, and, of course, launch our own satellite network christened «Broadband Cherubs.». 

If they persist in turning Sunday into a desert of connection, we will turn their empire into a humble sacristy: because man does not live by soccer alone, especially when they cut off the signal in the middle of the informative liturgy.