Dorna Sports, commercial rights-holder of MotoGP and the Superbike World Championship (WorldSBK), has engaged LaLiga, organising body of the top two divisions of Spanish club football, to aid its efforts to combat piracy of the motorcycling championships’ media rights.
As part of the tie-up, LaLiga’s Technological Content Protection department will use its own tools in order to monitor and eliminate illegal MotoGP and WorldSBK audio-visual content hosted on social networks, digital platforms and mobile apps.
Fake profiles that make fraudulent use of the Dorna Sports brand will also be monitored and eliminated, as well as those pertaining to Dorna’s championships.
In addition, LaLiga’s resources will be used to monitor and de-index web pages that use illegal Dorna Sports content from search engines. The tools created by the LaLiga team also allow the tracking, pursuit and compilation of legal evidence in order to fight illegal transmissions via IPTV and cardsharing.
Manel Arroyo, managing director of Dorna Sports, said: “The signing of this agreement between LaLiga and Dorna Sports shows our complete commitment to the fight against piracy. The protection of audio-visual rights is and always has been of utmost importance for us because, due to the exclusive and attractive nature of the content we produce, it suffers much more from the consequences of piracy.
“Both MotoGP and WorldSBK will greatly benefit from the tools created by LaLiga’s technological protection team, which is a global point of reference and therefore a guarantee of security for our Championships.”
LaLiga is already engaged in a similar partnership with the Pro League, the top division of Belgian club football. LaLiga has been providing the Pro League with tools to detect, analyse and remove illegal audiovisual content across social networks, fake profiles, apps and websites for streaming and IPTV.
Javier Tebas, president of LaLiga, said: “Joining with Dorna Sports motivates us to keep working to protect competitions’ audiovisual value. Fighting against piracy is a top priority for LaLiga and we’ll continue to invest in technical tools and human resources to keep advancing in this field.”
LaLiga joined Fifa, Uefa, the AFC and Europe’s other top leagues in condemning beoutQ’s piracy of their content in September last year. The eight major sports bodies jointly published a report which they said proved the pirate signal was being transmitted using the satellite infrastructure of Saudi state-backed broadcaster Arabsat.