Spain's LALIGA blocks knocked out 500,000+ websites

This article was published on July 3, 2026 To shut down illegal football streams, Spain's LALIGA has internet providers block shared IP addresses on match days. A six-month study by censorship watchdog OONI finds the tactic took down more than 500,000 legitimate sites, from Amnesty International to Greenpeace, and even exposed users to a network interception attack. For much of this year, Spanish internet users have lost access to huge parts of the web on match days. Not pirate streams, but human rights groups, climate charities and business tools. A new report puts hard numbers on the damage, and they are staggering. The culprit is Spain’s football league, LALIGA, and its court-backed war on illegal streams. To kill pirate broadcasts, it has internet providers block the IP addresses serving them. The catch is that modern websites share those addresses. Block one, and you can take thousands of innocent sites down with it. The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI), a nonprofit that measures internet censorship, spent six months tracking the fallout. Its verdict: the blocks hit more than 500,000 legitimate domains between January and June. The maths is brutal. On a match da