La Liga asks EU to place NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark and Proton VPN on piracy watch list
La Liga has asked the European Commission to put NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark and Proton VPN on the EU's 2027 piracy watch list, citing affiliate guides that show users how to bypass court-ordered blocks.
The Spanish football league says it is not objecting to VPN technology itself. Its complaint centres on affiliate marketing material published by outlets and influencers who earn a commission on VPN sales, which La Liga says removes the providers from the position of neutral technical intermediaries. The filing points to tutorials that explain how to connect to foreign servers to reach free or discounted football broadcasts, and to affiliate pages that name known pirate streaming platforms and describe how to get around court-ordered blockades. La Liga contends that both practices damage the territorial exclusivity underpinning its broadcast licensing deals.
"This request is based not on the provision of VPN services as such, but on the commercial exploitation and active promotion of their ability to circumvent court-ordered blocking measures," the league's document states, according to the account of the filing.
TechRadar said it had contacted NordVPN, Surfshark, Proton VPN and ExpressVPN for comment on the allegations and would update its report with their responses. No responses from the four companies were included in the material available.
The EU filing is the latest step in a long-running anti-piracy campaign by La Liga in Spain. Earlier this year, the league's blocking efforts led to more than 500,000 websites being wrongly blocked in the country, disrupting legitimate online services for users, and the league has repeatedly come into conflict with infrastructure providers including Cloudflare.
In February, a Spanish court issued an ex parte order requiring NordVPN and Proton VPN to block illegal football streams in Spain, concluding that the providers actively advertised their ability to bypass geo-restrictions. Both companies said they had never been formally notified of the legal action.
The dispute shifted again in May, when NordVPN won a legal battle over La Liga piracy fines. The court declined to impose penalties for non-compliance, accepting that the IP addresses used by pirate streams changed too frequently for a permanent block to be enforced.
Pressure on privacy tools has been building at the EU level as well. A recent EU study proposed takedown times of 30 minutes for illegal streams across DNS resolvers and VPNs.
【Editor's Summary】La Liga has asked the European Commission to list NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark and Proton VPN on the EU's 2027 Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List, arguing that affiliate marketing promotes circumvention of court-ordered blocks rather than attacking VPN technology itself. The request extends to Brussels a campaign that has already produced mass over-blocking and litigation in Spain, where NordVPN defeated La Liga over piracy fines in May. The four providers have not yet responded publicly, and an EU study on faster takedowns across DNS resolvers and VPNs adds to the regulatory pressure on privacy tools in Europe.