LALIGA granted precautionary measures against VPNs
February 17, 2026
LALIGA, the Spanish football governing body, and Telefónica Audiovisual Digital (TAD) report that they have been notified of several orders from Commercial Court No. 1 of Córdoba by which the ‘inaudita parte’ precautionary measures requested against NordVPN and ProtonVPN are granted, recognising the responsibility of these technological intermediaries in the process of piracy of LALIGA football matches.
Both VPN companies must now immediately implement the appropriate measures in their internal systems to make it possible for the IP addresses provided by the claimants, in which the illegal transmission of protected audiovisual content has been verified, to be inaccessible from Spain; a measure against which there is no appeal.
These orders recognise that VPN service providers are technological intermediaries that fall within the scope of application of the European Digital Services Regulation and, therefore, are subject to the requirement to prevent at least the commission of infringements under their infrastructures.
In turn, the orders identify how VPN systems prove to be a suitable means, “highly effective and accessible to generate the possibility of access to content not accessible in certain geographic points,” distorting the real geographic location of online access, and facilitating “access to websites that broadcast protected content illegally.” What is more, the orders highlight how the defendant companies acknowledge and even advertise “that their system is excellent at evading restrictions.”
Hence these precautionary measures to prevent these service providers “from contributing so that in Spain the access restrictions to certain websites that various Spanish judicial authorities have already decreed are evaded,” in reference to the December 2024 ruling of Commercial Court No. 6 of Barcelona.
For their part, the orders require LALIGA and TAD to “preserve sufficient digital evidence of the unlawful transmission of the protected contents” that they notify to the defendants, thus supporting the reliability of the procedures that LALIGA had already been using by virtue of that same December 2024 ruling, among others.
These judicial decisions add to other similar ones such as the one issued in France, where the responsibility of VPNs in the process of audiovisual fraud is also recognised.
The news follows a Spanish court judge ordering the country’s internet service providers to disclose the identities of customers suspected of watching pirate football.
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