France: Piracy down, but sports sector still hit hard
March 24, 2026
From Pascale Paoli-Lebailly in Paris
Illegal streaming and downloading of sports and entertainment content declined slightly in France in 2025, despite the progressive rise of new ways of piracy through VPNs and IPTV, according to a report from Arcom.
The French TV and digital regulatory body noted a 4 per cent year-on-year decrease in viewership for illegal treams, and this decline reached 34 per cent between 2021 and 2025 owing to the strength of the battle against piracy. However, it still represented a loss of €1.5 billion for the sector and broadcasters, including €300 million for sports specifically.
“Piracy is both a scourge and a major economic issue,” commented Arcom president Martin Ajdari speaking at an industry event on sports broadcasting.
The illegal broadcasting of sports via IPTV or VPNs has grown rapidly and, since 2022, complaints received by Arcom have resulted in the blocking of 12,606 domain names linked to unauthorised sporting events broadcasts. Half of them have been achieved in 2025, which is a 71 per cent increase compared to 2024.
Regarding entertainment content, 2,583 ‘mirror’ websites, which replicate already blocked websites under another name, were blocked in the last three years, with almost half of them in 2025. A growing share of these coercive measures target internet TV or IPTV services.
In upping its battle against piracy, Arcom is supporting a bill based on the “creation of a dynamic real-time blocking mechanism for illegal services broadcasting sport content”, intended to make the blocking of IP addresses easier, in addition to the blocking of domain names.
Other posts by :
- Forecast: SpaceX tracking to $20bn revenue in 2026
- EchoStar’s Dish restructures debt obligations
- AsiaSat hits Zee and JioStar with legal actions
- Nvidia unveils orbital chip/computer for AI and data
- Space Sector: ‘Profound Acceleration in 2026’
- Starcloud wants 88,000 satellites
- Lynk Global requests “experimental” satellite access
- Safran Space links laser direct to satellite
- SpaceX fearful of AST SpaceMobile’s potential?