Pirate IPTV “Shock Block” Operations Boost France ISP Blocking +146%

Hot on the heels of a live sports piracy report published last month, French telecoms/audiovisual regulator Arcom has just published its comprehensive annual report for 2024.

Weighing in at over 200 pages, the report covers all aspects of Arcom’s responsibilities, for which it received a €51.3 million budget in 2024.

From regulating the entire audiovisual sector, tackling online misinformation and hateful content, ensuring the safety of women and children, to the suppression of online piracy, Arcom is certainly busy. Especially so once piracy of live sporting events has been factored in.

The Fight Against Sports Piracy

Arcom data shows that overall, consumption of cultural content and live sports from all sources has increased quite dramatically among the French.

In 2024, 48.2 million were consumers, up 6 million on figures reported for 2020. On the plus side, Arcom says that the growth largely benefits legal platforms, with 67% consuming exclusively from legal sources in 2024.

Illicit consumption is reportedly on the wane; 26% of the population consumed at least one item illegally in 2020, a figure that fell by two points to 24% in 2024.

The reduction in overall piracy rates will be considered a plus but in common with other countries, live event piracy is a significant outlier in France.

Regular streaming, direct downloading, and peer-to-peer network use are all declining; for live events, use of pirate IPTV services and social networks is heading in the opposite direction.

Unwelcome Newcomer Blamed For Big Losses

Arcom describes the phenomenon as recent; two-thirds (66%) of illegal IPTV users say they started watching less than three years ago, with just 11% of users consuming for longer than that. Estimates on losses for various parties are as significant as those reported elsewhere.

“The regulator reassessed the loss of earnings linked to the illicit consumption of audiovisual content and retransmissions of sporting events, five years after an initial estimate. The loss was estimated at €1.5 billion, or around 12% of the market, to which is added a loss of €190 million for the State in tax and social security revenue,” Arcom reports.

“The loss of revenue for the audiovisual sector alone is estimated at €1.2 billion, and for the sports sector it’s €290 million, or 15% of the revenue generated by legal sports platforms and broadcasters in 2023.”

7 Rightsholders, 14 Sporting Events, 1 Common Response

Between January 1, 2024 and December 31, 2024, Arcom says it received a total of 4,919 requests for domain name blocking, from seven sports rights holders (three broadcasters and four sports leagues) concerning fourteen sporting events.

Football dominates as expected, with blocking requested for UEFA Champions League, Ligue 1 and Ligue 2, English Premier League, German Bundesliga, Spain’s La Liga, and the World Cup. Blocking requests were also received for several rugby events, tennis tournaments including Wimbledon and Roland-Garros, the Olympic and Paralympic Games, plus motorsports Formula 1 and Moto GP.

Surprise! ‘Shock Blockades’ Boost Overall Blocking in 2024

In March 2025, the clash between Paris Saint-Germain and Marseille was notable for the enhanced blocking measures deployed to disrupt piracy. The clubs previously met in October 2024, a match where an estimated 55% of the TV audience watched via pirate streams.

For the return match, blocking was deployed in two waves an hour apart, targeting around 100 pirate services, hoping to cause as much disruption as possible by taking pirates by surprise. Arcom’s 2024 report says coup de poing operations like these were partly responsible for boosting the volume of domains blocked last year.

“Massive ‘shock block’ operations were carried out during 2024 in partnership with rights holders against IPTV services during particularly popular sporting events, notably the French Ligue 1 and Ligue 2. For example, 258 IPTV services were blocked on October 27, 2024, during the [Paris Saint-Germain and Marseille] match. As a result, the number of requests to block domain names allowing access to IPTV servers increased considerably during 2024,” Arcom reports.

Processing increasing numbers of blocking requests was streamlined last year with the introduction of a new system at Arcom.

Available since June 2024, the system automates referrals with Arcom reporting “an improvement in the processing of referrals and, consequently, an increase in the volume of blocked domain names.”

Following Arcom notifications to ISPs, overall requests for 2024 led to 3,797 ‘pirate services’ being blocked, an increase of 146% compared to 2023.

The total includes 1,769 domain names “providing access” to IPTV services, 439 domains for which public DNS resolvers such as Cloudflare and Google were also required to take action, and 1,085 domains that major search engines, most likely Google and Bing, were required to de-index from search results.

Impact of Blocking Measures

Whether blocking is effective against streaming piracy largely depends on the scope of the question. Arcom measures effectiveness based on estimates of the audience for illicit streaming platforms; if the estimated audience for those sites reduces, then that’s a clear sign that blocking works, Arcom suggests.

“Demonstrating the effectiveness of the measures to block illegal sports sites implemented since January 2022, the audience for illegal live streaming represented, on average each month in 2024, 1.6 million internet users, down 18% compared to 2023. Over a longer period, this mode of consumption has fallen by 41% compared to its peak consumption in 2021, and by 30% compared to 2018,” the report notes.

That being said, there are caveats. Arcom says that while the “effects of DNS blocking are real” it’s important to consider whether internet users have moved to other methods of access. Half of all French consumers of illicit content (57%) say they now use a VPN, while 46% say they have changed their DNS settings.

“The development of criminal uses of these tools requires research into the most relevant measures to implement, and to call on all stakeholders likely to intervene to put an end to infringement of the rights,” the regulator adds.

Graduated Response

The so-called ‘graduated response’ program to tackle piracy via peer-to-peer networks like BitTorrent, has been running in France for 15 years. The shift away from BitTorrent to streaming services was inevitable due to the simplicity of the latter, meaning that the volume of claims from rightsholders and subsequent warning notifications sent to internet users, has continued to reduce year-on-year.

Arcom also considers other factors that may have contributed to the reduction.

“The decrease is due to several factors, the effectiveness of the fight against piracy, such as the transformation of uses in terms of consumption of works on the Internet, the acceleration of the availability of legal offers during the past years, even an increasing use of circumvention solution such as VPNs,” the regulator notes.

Of the 999 legal proceedings that were brought to the attention of Arcom in 2024, 45% resulted in financial penalties (fines or equivalent) compared to 28% in 2023. Arcom says that alternatives to financial penalties may have been preferred by the prosecutor, including “citizen contributions” paid to victim support groups, for example.

The full Arcom Annual Report 2024 is available here (pdf, French)

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