To strengthen the fight agains piracy of sports-related contdnt, Arcom has published a notice and two model agreements designed to make exchanges between rights holders and technical intermediaries more efficient and fluid.

In France, the direct loss (excluding loss of tax and social security revenue) linked to illegally-shown sports broadcasts has been estimated at 290 million euros in 2024. While professional clubs are the most directly affected, the entire sporting ecosystem suffers the consequences, including amateur clubs, which benefit from a contribution on the sale of sports event diffusion rights known as the "Buffet tax".

Against this backdrop, and pending the adoption of provisions enabling the automation of Internet Protocol blocking, as provided for in the proposed legislation on the organization, management and financing of professional sport, Arcom continues to strengthen its action against sports piracy by adopting a notice and two model agreements for rights holders and technical intermediaries.

The latter are designed to strengthen cooperation between the players concerned, in order to prevent and fight agains infringements of copyright, neighbor rights and audiovisual exploitation rights for online sporting events.

Strengthening the role of technical intermediaries (search engine operators, alternative DNS services and VPN providers)

Search engines play a key role in directing users to sports-related contdnt online. In recent years, the number of delisting measures ordered by the courts has risen sharply, as have those notified by Arcom at the request of rights holders. In 2025, 1,845 services were delisted out of a total of 6,496 blocked services.

Domain name resolution services (alternative DNS) and virtual private network (VPN) providers are used by Internet users to circumvent the blocking measures implemented by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Faced with this phenomenon, 81% of blocking requests sent to Internet Service Providers were also sent to alternative DNS in 2025, representing 5,263 notified requests.

In the case of VPN providers, the first court rulings were handed down in May 2025. Since then, Arcom has demanded the blocking of 598 domain names from such providers, upon submission of a case before the court by rights holders.

A notice and two model agreements to facilitate cooperation between players

To maintain this momentum and strengthen its effectiveness, Arcom is today publishing a notice and two model agreements for rights holders and technical intermediaries. The purpose of these models is to facilitate exchanges between the various parties involved, and to promote the simultaneous and rapid implementation of measures to fight piracy in sport.

To this end, Arcom has also developed a scheme to centralize all domain names for which the Authority has received a blocking or delisting demand from rights holders of sports-related content in the context of a court ruling.

In view of the proven effectiveness of this scheme, Arcom invites all technical intermediaries to connect to it. An interface contract describing the technical details of its use is available to them.

The decision relating to the notice accompanying the publication of model agreements provided for in article L 333-10 of the French Sports Code.