World Cup 2026: the scorecard of a tournament under heavy anti-piracy watch

From June 11 to July 19, 2026, Canada, the United States and Mexico hosted the biggest World Cup in history: 48 teams and 104 matches. Unsurprisingly, it was also one of the biggest events in sports piracy.

Three months after the final between Spain and Argentina, the assessments are out. They show massive piracy, but also enforcement tools that are much faster than at the previous World Cup.

Piracy on an industrial scale

Gaming Compliance International (GCI), a firm specializing in gambling compliance, published a striking estimate in August: 174.3 billion illegal views of at least 90 seconds during the tournament, including 6.2 billion for the final alone.

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That figure should be read with caution. It comes from a private methodology that cannot be verified, and it counts views, not people: a viewer who reloads a stream or switches mirrors is counted several times. But the study says something more interesting than its total.

According to GCI, 95% of those views carried advertising for unregulated betting sites. Still according to GCI, pirate sites earn 25% to 50% of the revenue these operators make from the bettors they refer. In other words, the free pirate stream is not free: it is a shop window for a parallel gambling economy.

United States: more than 1,000 domains seized

The US Department of Justice ran Operation Offsides throughout the tournament. On June 26, it announced the seizure of nearly 400 sites streaming matches without authorization. On July 20, the day after the final, the total had passed 1,000 domains, seized in three waves.

The domains were identified with help from FIFA and several rights holders, including beIN Media Group, NBCUniversal, Warner Bros. and the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment. Investigators also stressed an argument that speaks to viewers: these sites can expose visitors to malware and to the theft of their payment details.

In parallel, Operation Red Card coordinated eight Latin American countries. The US release lists nearly 2,000 sites blocked, more than 1,100 of them in Colombia.

France: cutting the server, not just the site

France tried a more direct method. Until now, blocking mostly targeted domain names: the site becomes unreachable, but the pirate opens another one within minutes. During the World Cup, Arcom, the French audiovisual regulator, cut the IP address of the servers carrying the streams at kickoff, and restored it when the match ended. On the first day of the tournament, 55 addresses had already been neutralized.

Before the tournament, Arcom's deputy director general, Pauline Combredet-Blassel, summed up the stakes: the risk, she said, is a black screen during the penalty shootout. She also acknowledged that the current legal framework, which requires human validation for every block, does not yet let the system work to its full potential. A bill on professional sport would automate these blocks.

Canada: an order extended until the final

In Canada, Bell Media held the rights to all 104 matches, broadcast on TSN and RDS. The country already had a proven tool: the Federal Court's multi-sport order (file T-743-24), obtained in 2024, which requires the major internet providers to block pirate servers live during games. The FIFA World Cup is among the competitions covered, and the order's expiry was pushed back to July 19, 2026, the day of the final.

On July 3, in the middle of the tournament, the Federal Court also issued another important order (T-1127-26), which makes it simpler to add new pirate sites that appear under other names. We covered it in a previous article.

What the tournament taught us

Three lessons stand out from this World Cup.

• Speed matters more than volume. A match lasts two hours. A measure that takes effect the next day is useless. The blocks that worked were the ones that hit during the live broadcast.
• Go after the source. Seizing a domain forces the pirate to change it; cutting the server stops the stream. Canadian orders understood this early by targeting IP addresses during games.
• Sports piracy is an industry. The betting ads show that these sites live on a business model, not on a few amateurs. They have to be fought with the means of a business: continuous monitoring, dated evidence, repeated action.

Major sporting events attract pirates, but they have also become the best testing ground for new blocking tools. For broadcasters and leagues, the question is no longer whether to act, but how fast.

Our agency monitors pirate sites and streams continuously, and documents every address it finds for takedown and blocking requests. If your live events are being rebroadcast without authorization, start with our free analysis.

Sources

• US Department of Justice, release of June 26, 2026: justice.gov
• US Department of Justice, release of July 20, 2026: justice.gov
• TV Tech, on the GCI study (August 19, 2026): tvtechnology.com
• franceinfo, on Arcom's system (June 10, 2026): franceinfo.fr
• Bbox-Mag, on IP address blocking (July 2026): bbox-mag.fr
• Bell Media, broadcast of the 104 matches in Canada: bellmedia.ca
• Rogers, order T-743-24 and sports covered: rogers.com