Watching football on pirate sites could cost you up to 2,500 pesos

This situation has forced people to opt for piracy. Now they choose to consume illegal sports broadcasts through social networks or unofficial sites. This has brought a problem: the so-called sports phishing, cybercrime that consists of placing keywords in certain links such as ‘Watch Champions League for Free’, ‘Watch Copa América for Free’ and ‘Watch Euro Cup for Free’, whose links only give access to data, particularly from people’s credit cards.

Victor Islas, director of customer operations for Latin America at CearSale, a fraud prevention company, estimated that when a user becomes a victim of phishing, they lose an average of 130 dollarsequivalent to 2,451 pesos.

This type of cybercrime in Mexico is equivalent to 1.5% of all fraud worldwide, representing a loss of 700 million dollars a year. Most of this amount comes from direct data theft from users, as well as hacks into databases.

Sports phishing tends to be more prevalent during tournaments such as the Euro Cup, Copa América or the World Cup. For example, in 2024 alone, compared to 2022, when the World Cup was held, the number of sports phishing attempts increased by 12%. Mexico is now ranked ninth worldwide in phishing attempts.

Streaming platforms have previously explained that to address the problem of piracy, they remove or disable websites or social media sites that they detect. But Islas said that although video-on-demand companies monitor 24×7 to take down such sites, they do not have automated tools to block and/or remove these sites.

The director assured that the dispersion of sports leagues on various streaming platforms has undoubtedly generated an increase in sports phishing. However, he said that even if the games returned completely to open television, cybercriminals would turn their attack towards other types of scams such as the Copa América Travel Raffle.

“The ideal situation is for companies to use software that allows them to defend themselves against phishing, pirate sites and other bad practices that negatively impact brands’ revenues and damage their reputation. Meanwhile, users should review and be more cautious about the sites they visit and investigate who the true owners of the rights to sporting events are,” Islas said.

In May, the Federal Telecommunications Institute (IFT) included in an update to Televisa’s regulation that ViX, TelevisaUnivision’s streaming platform, will not be able to maintain the exclusivity of the Liga MX broadcast rights. Instead, it will have to share the transmission of Liga MX matches with other television networks or concessionaires that provide television services, however, the new rule leaves out streaming competitors.

For a long time, football was considered one of the most accessible sports, as it did not require the internet, subscriptions to platforms or even a smart TV. Consumers could enjoy the games simply by having an analog screen that received signals from free-to-air television channels. However, this situation has changed with technological evolution.