These submissions traditionally focus on torrent sites, cyberlockers and pirate IPTV services. In recent editions, however, intermediaries such as hosting companies and Cloudflare have been added to the mix.
LaLiga takes this expanding reach a step further. In its submission for the 2027 edition, the Spanish football league asks for NordVPN, ProtonVPN, ExpressVPN and Surfshark to be listed.
The 14-page submission targets a wide range of sites and services, including traditional piracy threats, but the VPN section is new. The league notes that it doesn’t take offense with the technology itself, but with how these providers are marketed by others through their affiliate programs.
“The conduct that takes these services beyond neutral technical provision is the deliberate marketing of circumvention, conducted at arm’s length through affiliate programmes,” LaLiga writes.
Geo-Unblocking Free Football Broadcasts
LaLiga explains that publishers and influencers with affiliate deals publish guides, updated for the 2026/27 season, on how to watch its football matches for free using these VPNs. Those pages rank the providers and link to discounted subscriptions, while earning a commission on resulting sales.
Some of these guides point out that football fans can use the VPNs to circumvent geoblocking, allowing them to watch free or cheap broadcasts in other countries. This isn’t linked to pirate streams, but LaLiga notes that it harms the territorial exclusivity of its licensing deals.
Guides of this type are not hard to find. We came across several Spanish-language pages, updated for the new season, that recommend connecting to a foreign VPN server to watch matches on free broadcasts abroad.
These recommendations are published by affiliates, not by the VPN providers themselves. LaLiga’s submission doesn’t claim that the providers write the guides themselves, but it argues that the providers profit from them.
Circumventing Pirate Site Blockades
In addition to bypassing geo-blocking, the submission also flags guides that it sees as a more serious concern. These are affiliate pages that name pirate streaming sites and services, explaining that a VPN can bypass court-ordered site blocking measures.
LaLiga says that anyone can verify this affiliate marketing activity, but the submission doesn’t name or link to a single guide or influencer that’s crossing a line.
According to LaLiga, the publishers behind the guides are not always independent, linking the vpnMentor review site to Kape Technologies, which owns several VPN services.
“Publishers of the guidance are in some cases not independent. Within one of the corporate groups identified above, VPN review and ranking publications are under the same ownership as the products they rank, a relationship those publications disclose,” the submission reads.
Which of these publications include the guides LaLiga describes isn’t mentioned.
The submission also argues that some VPN providers have released marketing material timed around its match calendar. This is not backed up with examples, but in February a Spanish court in Córdoba reached a similar conclusion when it issued an ex parte site blocking order against ProtonVPN and NordVPN.
Without hearing the VPN providers, the court reportedly concluded that both NordVPN and ProtonVPN actively advertise their ability to bypass geo-restrictions, citing match schedules in their marketing materials, while describing the VPNs as active participants in the piracy chain.
The matter is not settled yet. In May, the same court refused to fine NordVPN for not complying, accepting that the targeted IP addresses of pirate streams changed frequently. The main proceedings are still ongoing.
VPN Technology is Fine
LaLiga asks the Commission to list the four providers because they allegedly facilitate access to blocked pirate sites and services. The league stresses that it’s not targeting the technology itself.
“This request is based not on the provision of VPN services as such, but on the commercial exploitation and active promotion of their ability to circumvent court-ordered blocking measures,” LaLiga writes.
The submission also opens with a disclaimer. “This submission does not assert any finding of legal liability against the entities named,” it reads.
The main allegation hinges on the affiliate promotion angle, without naming any specific guides. Whether that will be sufficient for the European Commission has yet to be seen, especially since it is still contested in courts and among lawmakers whether VPN providers should be required to implement blocking orders.
AFTVnews Downloader Short Codes
VPNs are not the only general-purpose tools in LaLiga’s submission. The league also targets Downloader by AFTVnews, a popular app for Fire TV and Android TV devices that lets users download files by entering a URL or a numeric short code.
LaLiga says it catalogued 341 of these codes, 262 of which lead to pirate apps. The league describes the codes as a curated catalogue, under the operator’s “exclusive editorial control.”
“The ease and simplicity with which applications can be discovered and installed through this catalogue is itself demonstrative of its nature as an editorially-curated platform, distinct from the underlying distribution infrastructure,” LaLiga writes.
AFTVnews, which boasts more than 100 million users, describes the codes as being “generated by the AFTVnews URL Shortener,” which suggests that they are created from links submitted by users.
Downloader has been targeted before. In 2023, Google removed the app from its Play Store following complaints from Israeli TV companies, and again after a DMCA notice from Markscan. The app was later reinstated.
Whether the Commission will mention Downloader or any of the four VPN providers in its 2027 piracy watchlist has yet to be seen. The latest Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List, released in 2025, did not include any VPN services, but did mention various hosting providers, IPFS, and domain name privacy service Njalla.
—
A copy of LaLiga’s submission to the European Commission is available here (pdf).
We reached out to ProtonVPN, the VPN Trust Initiative and AFTVnews for comment, but they did not respond before publication.
Disclosure: TorrentFreak uses VPN affiliate links, but not in a circumvention context.
