Spain´s Civil Guard has taken down the country´s largest illegal football streaming network, ‘Cristal Azul’, in an operation that left 78,000 users without access to pirated broadcasts of top Liga and Champion League matches.
The
Civil Guard announced the success of ‘
Operation Corsario Azul’ last week saying that they had disabled Spain´s largest illegal streaming channel and identified the 37 year old ringleader who remains at large and will face charges related to fraud and consumer market violations.
The Cristal Azul network provided streams of Spanish Primera and Segunda Division football, free of charge which was promoted on Telegram and other channels with an estimated loss value to legitimate Liga sponsors and broadcaster rights holder, Movistar, of over €42 million.
The investigation into Cristal Azul centred around an open source media KODI add-on. That is an extension that allowed access to the football streams. Investigators from the Guardia Civil’s Technological Research Unit (EDITE) traced digital pseudonyms embedded in the source code of the KODI extension, ultimately identifying the developer responsible. The investigation was prompted by a joint complaint from LaLiga and Movistar. Both companies are very eager to stamp out the unauthorised distribution of their exclusive content.
The crackdown on illegal streaming extended beyond Spain, with LaLiga confirming the arrest of a key figure behind a major piracy network in Ecuador on Thursday. The man, detained in Guayas province, was allegedly operating Flujo TV—a platform illegally distributing sports, live TV, series, and films. The Ecuadorian operation, launched after a joint complaint from Spanish club association LaLiga and Latin American sports broadcaster DIRECTV, aimed to curb unauthorised streaming across the region.
Javier Tebas, President of LaLiga, hailed the success of the operations, stating: “Disabling illegal platforms like MagisTV and FlujoTV is crucial for protecting intellectual property rights and safeguarding the livelihoods that the audiovisual industry supports across Latin America.
