Public institutions in Spain have displayed La Liga matches without paying royalties, and this act is not automatically treated as a copyright crime. In Alicante, a criminal court acquitted the bar owner and others who had been taken to court by the Prosecutor’s Office and LaLiga, who had privately pursued charges against the establishment for showing Barcelona-Alavés on December 21, 2019 through a Movistar subscription that was not mine or exclusive to the venue.
The case stemmed from a large operation across much of the country following LaLiga Profesionales’ complaint about bars broadcasting matches without paying the corresponding copyright. In Alicante, more than fifty residents testified, some already punished. The newly issued rulings overturned those verdicts, with justice indicating that football is not a literary, scientific, or artistic work, and thus broadcasting matches cannot automatically be deemed copyright infringement.
The latest sentences come from a Supreme Court decision issued last June, which Alicante judges leaned on to grant acquittals. Forensic sources confirmed to this newspaper that complaints are now being reconsidered in light of the new Supreme Court doctrine. The criminal court’s decision, the paper’s access showed, was not final and could be appealed, but given the Supreme Court’s clarity, neither the Prosecutor’s Office nor LaLiga appealed, making the verdict final.
private subscription
The incidents occurred in a central Alicante bar on December 21, 2019. The venue owner broadcast Pro Football League matches for patrons using an exclusive Movistar subscription, a fact the ruling found proved. Both the Prosecutor’s Office and LaLiga sought a fine for a crime against intellectual property, as they have in other cases tied to similar events. Yet after the Supreme Court decision, the argument shifted. It was asserted that showing a football game hardly qualifies as a crime against intellectual property because football is not literature or science. The court stated that matches can possess great aesthetic value but watching or interpreting those moments does not constitute an intellectual property crime. A football match is a sporting spectacle, not an artistic one.
Building on the same decision, the Alicante judge also concluded that “football is not literature” and that anyone who enables these events to be watched publicly without royalties has not committed such a crime. This underpinned the bar owner’s acquittal. The defendant testified that he relied on a privately contracted subscription to screen football at the venue, despite possible fines. There have been cases where sentences reached up to a year’s imprisonment.
During the trial, LaLiga’s lawyers pressed to sanction the bar owner for allegedly tampering with the decoder. In this instance, the crime was deemed time-barred since the events occurred two years earlier.
Supreme Court
The Supreme Court case involved a handful of bars in the Valencia province accused by LaLiga of providing pirated broadcasts via Movistar. The Valencia courts did not view the events as copyright crimes but as minor offenses tied to the market and consumers, an interpretation that prompted appeals up to the Supreme Court, whose exact reasoning was not published.
The new doctrine, already applied in Alicante, led to the filing of separate lawsuits against the organizations involved in the macro operation. Police actions from December 2018 to December 2019 were concentrated mostly in two Alicante courts, which proceeded to try cases separately.
Two types of complaints
Prosecutors indicated that complaints were divided into two main groups: illegal decoders enabling matches to be shown to customers without payment, and those who used exclusive subscriptions to various platforms to publicly distribute broadcasts. The prosecutor’s office requested the file because some facilities showed matches tied to foreign leagues for which audiovisual rights were not held in Spain.
LaLiga estimates total losses from these pirate broadcasts at around 500 million euros across Spain. Audience members watching in bars were treated as potential spectators who did not pay to view a game they were interested in.