{
  "id": 8179772,
  "title": "In Spain, football matches knock thousands of websites and services offline",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/18/in-spain-football-matches-knock-thousands-of-websites-and-services",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-09-18T03:55:03.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Euronews",
    "slug": "euronews",
    "url": "https://www.euronews.com/next/2026/09/18/in-spain-football-matches-knock-thousands-of-websites-and-services-offline"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Every football season in Spain, a digital filtration system kicks into high gear. Driven by legal mandates, LaLiga—the governing body led by Javier Tebas—orders internet service providers to block numerous IP addresses tied to unlawful match broadcasts. The goal is to deter piracy, but the real fallout is widespread: when a single IP is disabled, it cascades and halts access to numerous unrelated services. In essence, LaLiga wields court-authorized power to issue IP blocks, which contravenes net neutrality principles.\n\nThe root of the issue lies in the internet's architecture. Many websites and online services share IP addresses, akin to multiple tenants using a single physical address. When an IP is blocked, all services hosted under that address suffer. This collateral damage affects countless internet users attempting to access these platforms during match days. To underscore this, imagine Spain cutting power to all households because one resident was pilfering electricity—a clear exaggeration of the internet's predicament.\n\nTebas maintains that mass blocks are minimal and complaints are limited to a handful of tech enthusiasts. However, evidence suggests otherwise, with 500 to 1,000 IPs typically targeted per match. The blocks commence just before the game and cease once play concludes. LaLiga identifies and requests the shutdown of specific IP addresses associated with pirate services. Over the 2026-2027 season's opening matchday on August 15, around 550 IPs were simultaneously blocked. Since then, this practice has persisted each matchday.\n\nAccording to the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), during the first half of 2026, 7,441 IP addresses belonging to 36 different providers faced blocks. This includes major providers like Amazon AWS, Cloudflare, Akamai, Alibaba Cloud, Microsoft, and Meta. LaLiga downplays these blocks as dynamic, non-massive, and justified by alleging annual losses ranging from 600 to 700 million euros due to piracy. Yet, this approach unfairly burdens innocent parties.\n\nThe core issue stems from how the internet operates, clashing with LaLiga's proposed solution. This method inadvertently disrupts thousands of websites whenever a match occurs. A content delivery network (CDN) such as Cloudflare serves content from multiple sources under a single IP, enhancing loading speeds and mitigating DDoS attacks. However, blocking a CDN's IP inadvertently halts access to thousands of associated services, including those of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), Amnesty International, Greenpeace, UNICEF, UNHCR, Caritas, courts, universities, AI model hosting platforms like Hugging Face, and even some football clubs' websites and sponsors.\n\nThe OONI report, examining Spain between January and June 2026, estimates that over 554,000 legitimate domains were impacted. Cloudflare, despite blocking only 30% of the targeted IPs, saw 90% of the affected domains, totaling over 501,000. Notable cases include the Redsys payment gateway, which experiences frequent online payment failures during LaLiga matchdays, leaving retailers uncertain about the cause. Additionally, WikiDex, the premier Spanish-language Pokémon encyclopedia, and various AI LLM model hosting websites have faced access issues.\n\nDuring the Real Madrid match on September 15, Cloudflare IPs were among those blocked by Spain's major internet operators. For example, accessing mandalaweb.es—a site offering coloring pages—and todopuntodecruz.com—a site selling cross-stitching kits—was disrupted. Notably, using a VPN from outside Spain allowed access to these sites, suggesting the blocks are indeed indiscriminate.\n\nTebas attributes the complaints to a small group of tech-savvy individuals, dismissing them as geeks. However, the reality is far more extensive, with a nationwide impact. This systematic blocking appears to target anyone attempting to access content related to LaLiga's IPTV signal, regardless of the content's nature.",
  "summary": "Spain's football season kick-off has revived LaLiga's court-backed mass blocking of IP addresses, hitting thousands whose sites and services fail whenever matches start.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}