To reach the billion euros in TV rights hoped for, French football must notably reduce piracy, a “winnable” fight even if “it will be long”, explains the deputy general secretary of beIN Sports to AFP before the auction on Tuesday for the broadcast of Ligue 1.
Piracy is “big business”
“We cannot eradicate piracy in such a rapid time frame, it is protean, it is a big business, they do everything to circumvent protection measures,” explains Caroline Guenneteau, also legal director of the Qatari channel.
“In the meantime, French law has largely contributed to considerably reducing mass consumption, via streaming sites,” she adds. The law of October 25, 2021 on the regulation and protection of access to cultural works in the digital age, in force since January 1, 2022, aims in particular to protect live sport on TV.
The director, who initiated the founding five years ago of the APPS, Association for the Protection of Sports Programs, considers “this law effective, it allows us to obtain legal injunctions to block streaming sites illegal”. “Unfortunately, we still get hacked a lot,” she admits.
“We manage to block a lot of sites”
“But it’s a process that is only a year old, which is in the process of being industrialized, there is real work of judicial coordination, between beIN, Canal, the L1… We manage to block when even a lot of sites”, confides Caroline Guenneteau.
The “tactic” is to “target the big, well-known sites first, to discourage the basic Internet user”. Which “perhaps does not stop the diligent pirate, the geek who whatever the state of the law will always find a way to circumvent”.
A “winnable” fight
But, “the fight is winnable”, assures Caroline Guenneteau. “We have obtained a text dedicated to the protection of live sports content (live), it is still enormous progress. Other European countries are taking France’s example. It is slow, we must not be impatient, but it’s not a lost cause, far from it. If we didn’t fight this fight, we would have lost a lot more.”