A few days before the launch of the official matches of the Qatar 2022 World Cup, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), an association dedicated to protecting the ecosystem of creative content, announced this Friday, November 18, having succeeded in shutting down the main sports content piracy websites operating in Morocco.
The sites concerned broadcast several live football matches for free, such as livekoora.online and yalla-shoot-new.tv which were able to attract multiple viewers and record a number of 20.6 million visits per month, stopped in October 2022, before their closure on the 11th of the current month, indicates the press release from the Alliance received by MoroccoLatestNews.
According to the same source, the piracy operation mainly targeted the content of the global sports channel beIN SPORTS, which joined ACE last April and contributed to the closure of these piracy sites in Morocco.
The move comes just nine days before the start of the World Cup in Qatar, which is expected to attract an estimated 5 billion viewers.
In this regard, Executive Vice President and Head of Content Protection of the Motion Picture Association and President of ACE, Jan van Vooren, commented that ” our success in shutting down piracy sites in Morocco is due to our focus on addressing the growing risks of sports content piracy to consumers, sports leagues and viewers.”
“Our cooperation with beIN SPORTS, as a member of the alliance, sends a clear message to all content pirates around the world that we will not tolerate their detection and closure, especially those planning to steal content from FIFA World Cup 2022 Upcoming Matches” , he added.
In another statement quoted by the statement, a beIN Group spokesperson said they were “ happy “ to shut down illegal streaming sites in Morocco days before the start of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. “We would like to thank our partners at the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment for their support in the fight against piracy, which helps protect our customers in Morocco from illegal live streaming services.“.
According to the document, the ACE has significantly stepped up, this year in particular, its efforts to address the growing threat of large-scale piracy of live sports channels. A recent study by Synamedia/Ampere indicated that tackling global piracy of sports content could add $28 billion to the industry’s annual revenue.
The Alliance’s comprehensive approach to reducing piracy includes criminal referrals, legal action, direct communications and other methods, giving the Alliance and its partners the ability to take quick action to reduce piracy. live sports content on a global scale, explains the association in its press release.
That said, Moroccans who often depend on free websites to watch live matches must now find another legal solution to be able to watch the upcoming World Cup matches or to obtain a subscription from the channels that acquired the rights to broadcast the competition.