La Liga president blasts Cloudflare
January 12, 2026
From David Del Valle in Madrid
Javier Tebas, president of Spain’s La Liga, has criticised Cloudflare’s CEO Matthew Prince, accusing him of becoming the “Narco Maduro of the Internet” in an escalating dispute over online piracy.
Tebas made the remark in a post on social media platform X, where he cited Prince’s response to a €14.25 million fine imposed on Cloudflare by the Italian telecommunications regulator Agcom for failing to comply with the country’s anti-piracy framework, known as Piracy Shield.
The exchange highlights growing tensions between content rights holders and major technology intermediaries over how best to tackle the unauthorised distribution of live sports and other copyrighted material.
La Liga has accused Cloudflare of facilitating piracy by assigning identical IP addresses to both legitimate and infringing websites — a practice that can see lawful sites taken offline when rights holders seek to block pirate content.
In his original post, Prince lambasted the Italian sanctions, branding the anti-piracy measures a form of “Internet censorship” and argued that the requirements to rapidly block access to alleged infringing sites were unworkable and lacked due process. He also invoked the names of Elon Musk, owner of X, and US Vice-President JD Vance, appealing to them for support and warning of possible retaliatory actions, including withdrawing Cloudflare’s pro-bono cybersecurity services for the 2026 Winter Olympics and reducing investment in Italy.
Tebas responded with scathing language, suggesting Prince’s stance equated to enabling criminal behaviour online and asserting that “fighting piracy is not censorship”. He took issue with what he described as Cloudflare’s refusal to respect the laws and institutions of European countries, urging influential figures such as Musk and Vance to recognise the importance of protecting intellectual property rights.
The row is part of a broader conflict over digital piracy. La Liga and other sports rights holders have been pressing for stronger enforcement against illegal streams and downloads, arguing that widespread unauthorised access undermines revenues that support clubs, jobs and grassroots sport. Cloudflare, for its part, maintains that overly broad blocking orders can lead to ‘overblocking’ of lawful services and threaten an open internet.