Advanced Television

TAG: World Cup pirates sunk by ad industry action

June 30, 2026

TAG, a non-profit created by the global advertising industry to fight ad-related criminal activity and address other supply chain challenges, has announced a cross-industry initiative to cut off advertising revenue to 1,376 digital piracy sites providing illegal streams or other content stolen from the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

“Global sporting events like the World Cup are prime targets for criminals who try to intercept legitimate ad dollars by stealing popular streaming content,” commented Rachel Nyswander Thomas, Chief Operating Officer of TAG. “The TAG AdSec Threat Exchange has created as an early-warning system to identify and block ad revenue to websites that are profiting from stolen content, and this first-of-its-kind initiative allows us to fight those criminals in near-real time by cutting off the flow of ad dollars to the content thieves targeting the World Cup.”

TAG compiled the list through contributions from industry partners and members of the TAG AdSec Threat Exchange, the leading forum for sharing advertising-related threat intelligence. TAG has shared the sites through its Pirate Domain Exclusion List (PDEL) with key intermediaries across the digital advertising supply chain to prevent ad dollars from reaching those illegitimate sites.

TAG’s demonetisation efforts provide a powerful and complementary mechanism to the seizure of 400 pirate domains announced by the US Department of Justice on June 26th as part of ‘Operation Offsides’, in which TAG was also a participant. While they share common sources, the pirate domains seized by the government are distinct from the pirate domains that are being demonetised through TAG’s efforts.

In addition to the newly demonetised domains, TAG also identified an additional 176 domains trafficking in stolen World Cup that were already on its PDEL list

Categories: Content, Headline, Piracy

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